Doncaster Sheffield Airport closure: Wizz Air confirms date of final flight

Flight operator Wizz Air has announced that all services to and from Doncaster Sheffield Airport (DSA) will move to Leeds Bradford once the South Yorkshire site closes down.

DSA's owners, Peel Group, announced this week that flights would start "winding down" from 31 October after a review found that the business was no longer viable.

Wizz Air is one of two operators, along with Tui, which use the airport, flying to dozens of destinations across Europe, the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean and North Africa.

Tui said its final flights would leave the airport on 4 November.

Today, Wizz Air said all routes to DSA would transfer to Leeds Bradford Airport from 31 October.

A spokesperson said: "Wizz Air flights from Gdansk, Katowice, Krakow, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Bucharest, and Cluj-Napoca will continue to operate to Doncaster Sheffield Airport as planned until 30 October 2022.

"Customers booked to travel on those routes after 30 October 2022 will be automatically rebooked onto flights operating to Leeds Bradford Airport."

The company said customers would be given the option of accepting the new flight, changing their booking to an alternative flight free of charge, or cancelling their flight and receiving a full refund or a credit worth 120% of the flight's value.

It comes after a cross-party group of MPs wrote to Peel Group chairman John Whittaker to call for the company to reverse its decision.

The 18 MPs, from across northern constituencies, criticised the company's refusal to accept an offer of public money to keep the airport open for another year to allow time to find another operator.

The letter said: "Instead you choose to make a decision which means the loss of 2,700 jobs and the loss of £100million to the local economy, preferring instead to make people redundant, damage the economy and close the airport down. That makes no sense and does not show any degree of corporate responsibility."

On Monday Peel Group said there were "intractable problems" with the business. Chief executive Steven Underwood said it would be wrong to take public money.

He said: "Accepting funds from SYMCA may postpone the inevitable for another 13 months, but it will divert funds away from services on which communities throughout South Yorkshire rely."

The company said "no tangible proposals" had been put forward to save the airport or "address the fundamental lack of financial viability".

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