Things were not supposed to go wrong quite so quickly. In 2004, three months after launching an airline catering to eastern Europeans and employing the low-cost model made famous by Southwest Airlines and Ryanair , József Váradi had to ask his management team to work for free. It was that or go under.
Mr Váradi, a Hungarian economist who had climbed the corporate ladder at Procter & Gamble and then spent 18 months as chief executive of Malev, Hungary’s now defunct state-owned airline, had taken delivery of six leased aircraft for his company, Wizz Air. He was confident he could fill them: the potential customers were there and the proposition was right.
But he had been more relaxed about the progress of signing up passengers when he thought finalisation of funding arrangements with institutional investors was imminent. In fact, securing the hundreds of millions of euros needed was taking longer than expected, and in the meantime cash was leaching out of the young business in the form of fuel payments, airport charges and salaries. As suppliers started talking about bills not being paid, the press pounced. “It was very distressing,” he says. “There were articles suggesting people shouldn’t book because we were on the brink of going bust, and I had to tell [staff] it was very uncertain their salaries would ever be paid.”