Hungarian Commercial Flight Breaks Unusual World Record Over Polish Airspace

There’s nothing worse than being delayed or missing your flight altogether, but what if you just couldn’t land? Today, somewhere over Poland, a Wizz Air flight circled no less than 27 times before finally landing at its destination of Krakow.

Having taken off from a nearby city, Katowice, the Airbus A321 airliner bound for Krakow was instructed to hold position. AV geeks on X went crazy, with most asking how the aircraft had enough fuel to stay in the air that long.

One user commented:

“Every airliner departs with enough fuel to reach destination + alternative airport + 30 minutes extra. Each of these holding “laps” takes 1 minute. With that said, they could easily perform more than 50 of those without a problem.”

Flight WZZ401 eventually made it to its destination, just very late and no doubt with some angry passengers. The flight also happened to be the most tracked on Flight Radar.

Wizz Air is a European ultra-low-cost airline headquartered in Budapest, Hungary. It operates primarily in Central and Eastern Europe, though its network spans over 50 countries across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

The airline is known for its budget fares, offering travellers the opportunity to fly at low costs by focusing on no-frills services. It also comes in a fetching pink colour.

This handy little chart from FlightAware shows the 27 lumps, each a round trip in the sky. I bet you’ve never seen that before or had to experience it. After the past few days of air disasters, let’s hope we don’t see any other issues.

The whole issue was due to heavy fog at Karkow Airport.