Welcome to the Wizz Air 2020 full year results call. Throughout the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, afterwards there'll be a question and answer session. Just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded. Today, I am pleased to present József Váradi, CEO, and Jourik Hooghe, CFO. Gentlemen, please begin your meeting.
Good morning, everyone. This is József. Thank you for joining this call. This is kind of an unprecedented format of delivering results, these are the times we are in. As a matter of fact, Wizz Air delivered record revenue and net profit. Maybe nobody's interested anymore about the performance of the last financial year, actually we had a pretty good year. Revenue grew 20%, net profit grew 30%, we expanded our market performance. The improvement came in on the basis of very significant passenger revenue growth. We grew CEE revenues by 14% per passenger, also on a very strong cost performance. Ex- fuel cost came down 1%, you recall that this is sort of the guidance that we have been giving to the market that we would be expecting extra fuel cost to decline.
Obviously, we don't fully control what happens to fuel, but what we can control, actually we have performed very well. We are one of the very few airlines maintaining investment grade, and maintaining the grade that we used to have. Moody's just reconfirmed our investment grade, and obviously this is on the base of the prospect of the business on the very strong balance sheet to weather the storm short-term. We are very proud of it, and we do everything we can to maintain our positions to an extent possible. We have taken a number of actions during the course of the last few months to minimize cash burn. Essentially, we are managing the business for cash.
We have been always managing the business for cash, but particularly given the times we are in, we are much more focused on cash, and we have taken all possible actions to minimize cost and resulting cash burn. We've acted on organizational matters. We've acted on business matters. We've acted on supplier payment terms to make sure that we are in good position to weather the storm. At the same time, we are very keen on ramping the business up again. We are the airline leaving the markets last and coming back first. I think that's what you should be expecting from a balance sheet that we have, and you should be expecting it from the cost leader of the industry where we are at right now. We have some encouraging signs of demand. We will elaborate on that.
Also, we are seeing some significant restrictions imposed by governments that are holding demand back. With that, I would move to the next slide. This is just to give you some background on how the business is doing as we speak. We cut capacity already in March by around the third. April was the worst month of the airline in history. 97% of our capacity was grounded. Some improvement in May, the double of the business, but still 93% of our capacity was grounded. Obviously, as the rest of the industry, or most of the industry, we also have suffered from ineffective hedges, causing EUR 64 million of losses during the March-May period. We have taken actions on optimization. I mean, clearly the grounding has resulted in unproductive stuff in the business.
Even if we were to restore the schedule in full completion for the second half of the year, we would need less pilots and cabin crew, simply because we have lost a lot of productivity in the first half of the year through the grounding. Some of it can be gained back in the second half. We acted on this by reducing the workforce by 19%. Also we have cut compensation by 14% on average. Compensation of officers and the board of directors got cut by 22%. Having said that, we remain quite positive with regard to the longer-term outlook of the business and our ability to take advantage of the situation and to take advantage of market consolidation following COVID-19. As a result, we have maintained our commitment to taking deliveries of our order book with Airbus.
I think we must be probably the only airline, but certainly one of the very few on the planet, that continues to honor the contractual commitment with Airbus. We don't do that for honoring contractual commitment. We do it because we think that the following market consolidation will spring significant opportunities for Wizz Air, and we have already acted on some of those. We have been also quite creative in this period, and got into rescue flying and medical cargo flying. Altogether, we have performed around 130 flights, over 100 flights flying medical cargo from China to Hungary mainly, which is of course an irregular operation, and we don't plan to maintain our cargo operations in the future.
We thought it was a good way of helping our countries, helping our societies, contributing to the resolution of the medical issues we all are facing and at the same time remain operational. Also, we have done quite a number of repatriation flights, even flying to the U.S. twice with three aircrafts, which I would have never thought we would do. We have an interest in ramping up operation to an extent possible, and I would say that we are pretty much operating whatever we can. Based on our demand sensing, we believe that the desire to fly our customers is there. People want to move, especially after having been locked down for two-three months. It is more the restrictions imposed by governments that are the limiting factor to flying.
We think that as restrictions are getting eased, at least in certain countries, that should help us stimulate demand in a much more robust way versus what we are able to achieve now. We will give you some guidance on what capacity we think we're going to be able to fly. Moving on to the next slide. This is giving you an overview on the current state of operations. The footprint of the network. We carried 40 million passengers in the last financial year with a fleet of 121 aircraft. As we speak today, we are 122. We took delivery of an aircraft a few days ago. We have a network operating 255 airports across 25 bases in 45 countries.
Just back to COVID-19, I can tell you that one of the difficulties is the sheer complexity falling out of the various government restrictions in place. In the 45 countries we operate through, there are no two countries imposing the same restrictions. As a result, it's almost impossible to pass through this jungle of ever-changing regulatory restrictions or easing to fully understand what is going on here. If you move on to the next slide. This is showing the strengths of the business measured on market share and market positions. As a matter of fact, in the last financial year, Wizz Air became a better airline, a stronger airline, a more formidable competing force. We've got 40% of the low-cost airline capacity share in CEE, which was an increase of one point.
As you can see, in 65% of our markets, we are the leading low-cost carrier. In 45%, we are number two or number three. Where we are the leading low-cost carriers, actually, we are, in many cases, the single largest airline of the whole industry. The business has been going from strength to strength, and even today operating under very difficult circumstances. Clearly, we have demonstrated our ability to be very resilient and still be focused on the purpose of the business, flying people, flying passengers to an extent possible. During the course context of Central and Eastern Europe, Wizz Air is the most operational airline. As said, we've been the first to come back to markets and last to leave those markets when we had to.
We had no other choices, we are very eager to restart in every one of our markets and ramp up operations to an extent possible. With those headlines, I will turn it over to Jourik, who will take us through the financial results.
Thanks, József, good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to speak with most of you for the very first time. On page seven, let me give some color on the financial highlights for fiscal 2020. You'll see that the company has delivered outstanding market-leading results across all metrics. Starting with revenue. Revenue increased 19%, reaching EUR 2.8 billion. As said, driven behind strong ASK growth as we expanded the fleet to the 120 aircraft, as mentioned by Jo. That also resulted in 16% passenger growth. What makes this even a stronger performance is that whilst we drive really capacity and passenger growth, also our unit revenue increased 3%. Reported profit more than doubled to EUR 281 million. A big part of that, of course, is due to the changes caused by IFRS 16 in the base year in 2019.
To really see the underlying performance, we need to look at the underlying profit, which increased 30% to EUR 345 million, despite COVID impacting us for a good month, resulting in an underlying profit margin of 12.5%. Given that we didn't use the underlying profit term most recently, let me briefly explain that for F20, the difference between the underlying and statutory profit is only driven behind the EUR 64 million worth of ineffective fuel hedges that Jo also mentioned in the beginning. Those hedges relate to the period of March, April, and May 2020, and they became ineffective, of course, because of COVID-19, as we no longer contracted that tonnage. The reason, of course, again, is the grounding, and I said the delta in 2019 between underlying and reported is driven behind IFRS 16.
From an operating point of view, both RASK and Ex-fuel CASK were highly accretive, and we'll talk about that later. To close off the slide here, very importantly in the current times, our total cash at the end of the year was EUR 1.5 billion. Looking at the financial obligations of the company and the cash burn, which we'll talk later, this metric also here is putting us top of the airline industry and many industries for that matter, as we'll highlight later. It will allow us to really come back strongly as we engage in several opportunities in the wake of COVID-19. Okay. Moving to slide eight. You'll see a little bit more detail on our revenue performance, which was, as said, not only driven behind the passenger growth, but also by the unit revenue growth.
The internals of that are really where we want them to be. It's a terrific performance on ancillary, with 14% growth per passenger, which allowed us to invest back in affordable ticket fares and then to really stimulate the traffic. That's really what we want. This makes travel, as I said, affordable for everyone, and our load factors with that also continue to increase, now at 94% for the year, up 70 basis points. On slide nine, if we continue to peel that onion on the ancillary revenue, you can see that it's now at EUR 31.3 per passenger. It's a EUR 3.7 per passenger increase, which is higher than the EUR 0.5-EUR 1 per passenger mid to long term goal that we have every year. Ancillary is now 45% of our total portfolio in revenue. Bags obviously remain one of the key ancillary revenue products.
In bags, we had some history, but you can see there's an encouraging increase here. The rest of the portfolio, the other 18% continues to grow very strongly with 15% growth. Okay. Going from ancillary to our cost, which is another key pillar of our model. As Joe highlighted, we declined ex-fuel CASK 1%. Fuel CASK increased 4.5%. You can see that on ex-fuel, I think we're pretty stable on pretty much most of the line items. We had a slight increase in the maintenance, mostly driven behind the way we are in the lease term and the age of our fleet, which aged around 0.7 years. Utilization of the fleet was flat for the year at 12 hours and one minute. This is all despite the 10% drop in Q4 behind COVID-19.
We had very good performance in the first three quarters, unfortunately offset by COVID-19 in the last quarter. We traded over 2019 where we had some benefits on transactional gains on asset sales. Most of that were offset by the decision that we've taken back in April 2019 to move the majority of our cash into dollar deposits, which helped our interest income. All in all, given that we're already the lowest cost provider in the industry, reducing a further 1% is simply a great performance. Okay. On the fuel CASK, we're up EUR 0.04 from EUR 1.11 to EUR 1.15. For the avoidance of doubt, this excludes any impact of the ineffective hedges that we mentioned before. On the next slide, we want to highlight once more the strength of our balance sheet.
We remain investment graded, as József was mentioning, with Moody's and with Fitch, at a time where most of the industry is getting downgraded. These rating agencies, as Jo mentioned, they understand that FY 2021 will be a little bit of a strange year, an off year in terms of meeting certain criteria. They see the shorter, the midterm, and the longer term horizon definitely in our business, and they know that the liquidity position that we have helps us to carry through the short term, and they believe in the model longer term. On the next slide, you'll see that the different cash actions for the company were absolutely focused on this. We reported, and Jo mentioned, the cost savings programs of the company in terms of reductions and headcount reductions. We want to say that those are by and large executed now.
In addition, we drew down the EUR 300 million facility as part of the CCFF fund, and we added that to our cash balance. We started April at EUR 1.8 billion in cash. We remain absolutely on track to stay in line with our burn rate of EUR 90 million per month for the next six months until, let's say, end of September, and there onwards with EUR 70 million per month. This is obviously in a scenario where we would operate absolutely not a single flight. If you do the math, you'll understand that Wizz Air has liquidity well over 12 months and possibly double that in the same scenario of not flying a single aircraft. We also want to underline the last point here on the slide, is that we operate the flights today in a cash and in a contribution positive way.
That continues to lower our cash burn. Maybe enough about the past. Looking forward, if you see on the next slide. I'll start maybe with some points on FY 2021, and then I'll hand it over back to József for some further and strategic business perspectives as we look ahead. We are seeing strong demand as restrictions are getting lifted. As just mentioned, our flights are contribution positive. You read and heard that we are taking charge of our own destiny. We have the financial muscle to do this, and we are deploying the aircraft against significant new market opportunities. This, while pretty much all of the competitors are retiring parts of their capacity. We plan to grow the number of our seats in our fleet by roughly 10%. Those seats are even more efficient than what we had in FY 2020.
On average, we have now 203 seats per aircraft versus 201 in FY 2020. A321 aircraft will make up 49% of our fleet. Remember, the A321 has 230 seats in the ceo version and 239 in the neo version. It burns significantly less fuel, 16%, in the neo version. The nitrogen oxide reduction is 50%, the noise reduction is 50%. All in all, a cost reduction of around 20% on the neo versus the A320ceo version. We have more of those coming, not only in FY 2021, but also in FY 2022. With all of this said, unfortunately, we cannot guide with any responsible level of accuracy on the loss that we'll make for FY 2021 or on the cash levels for FY 2021. I think you'll understand that in the current context.
Now I just want to give it to Jo, which will give amongst others, other points of view on the capacity and how we'll carry passengers and where we'll do that in the next slide. Jo, back to you.
Yeah. Thank you, Jourik. Let's move on to page 15. I'd like to elaborate on four very important matters when it comes to recovering the business from where we are today. Jourik has elaborated on cash and cost measures we have been putting in place. Let me just highlight two aspects of that. As said, we have two years of liquidity on hand. If we don't operate a single flight, we don't carry a single passenger in the next two years, we are still in business without any capital requirements from government or private investors. I think that's a very important statement with regards to the resilience of the company. Secondly, we remain on investment-grade credit. That is important because we continue to finance aircraft, we continue to take deliveries of aircraft.
We are subject to the financing market, and obviously our credit rating helps us a lot to access capital at reasonable costs, even under the current circumstances. I also want to elaborate on three other aspects with regard to what protocol and what measures we have put in place to reflect on the situation when it comes to customers and our crews. What we are doing to recover demand and how agile we are as a business to take advantage of some of the opportunities arising from the current situation. Moving on to the next slide, page 16. We have actually done quite a bit with regard to addressing consumer concerns, possibly out there. Maybe I should just start by saying that flying remains very safe as a way of travel.
On a global basis, there isn't a single case we would be aware of that would prove that an infection would have taken place aboard of an aircraft. No one has been infected by flying, or at least we are certainly not aware of that. Some scientific studies have been carried out with that regard with the same conclusion. By design, flying an airplane is very safe from a health perspective. Having said that, we have enhanced our standing here by launching a new protocol, and we are obliging the wearing of masks by our crews as well as our passengers to maximize the level of protection. We have eliminated most of the touch points aboard of an aircraft, so payment is only possible by credit card. We have removed all tangible items like in-flight magazines to create an even safer environment.
We are distributing for free of charge hand sanitizers, again, to up our standards when it comes to personal health and safety matters. Another aspect of our approach to customers is that we are probably the only airline in Europe, if not the world, that took a, I think, a very fair and reasonable stand on refunding passengers of canceled flights. Should a passenger choose to get cash refund, we guarantee within 30 days, we actually refund that passenger. We have automated the whole process of refunds. This is no longer a discretion of the company, or it is not subject to workforce constraints like it is the case in many other airlines. This is a totally automated process. We made a significant investment here, but I think that gives a much fairer approach to the customer.
Also, we encourage people to rebook or take a voucher, and should they take a voucher, we up the value of their fare by 20%, so we offer a pretty good deal. Roughly what we are seeing today is a third of the passengers rebook, a third take credit, and a third request refund. We can handle each of these very fairly and equitably across our customer groups. We have a very young and mobile customer group with average age of 36 years. As you can imagine, this will be the group that will recover first, certainly much earlier than the elderly people. These people tend to be more adventurous, more agile, and they are seeking more adventures, and they are naturally more on the move.
With that regard, I think we are very well positioned that we're going to be seeing a quicker and more robust recovery with our customers. Another important matter which we understand from demand sensing is that essential travel, such as visiting friends and relatives, is very important, and we expect actually quite a large number of people to start moving immediately as they can. 65%, 70% of people indicate that they would want to travel in the next six months, and around 30% say that they would actually do that in the next month or two, so pretty much immediately. Clearly what we are seeing is that the issue is not the desire of travel by customers. It is much more the restrictions in place limiting their movements.
Actually we are quite encouraged with regard to our position to be able to recover the trust of the consumer and actually start seeing more and more people flying. Moving on to the next slide. With regard to capacity planning, I need to say that everything that I'm going to tell you now is kind of interesting from a numerical perspective because you are getting some hints on numbers that you can expect from us, but it is hugely subject to government restrictions out there. This is something we don't control. You can see a number of countries going one direction and other countries going a different direction.
If you look at Europe as we speak today, we started seeing some easing of restrictions coming into play by quite a number of countries, much led by Germany in a way, and also by the southern countries opening up markets for tourism in summer. At the same time, the U.K. is taking a reverse direction by imposing quarantine in the coming days. We are operating to 45 countries, and there are no two countries with the same set of measures in place for the same interpretations of those measures. It's a complete zoo with that regard. Within that context, we are expecting to perform around 15% of our capacity in the first quarter. This is the last month of the quarter.
Going into peak summer, so July, September, we expect to see around a 60% ramp up. Second half would be around 80% again, subject to government restrictions imposed. The 60% going into the next quarter, you may think this is aspirational. I think it is a bit better based than just that. We've already got a few countries, around three countries, that are at that level already. Government restrictions have been minimalized, and as a result, the market has become free and consumers are free to move, and immediately we are seeing a significant jump on demand. In terms of load factor, actually we are quite pleased with our ability to fill flights. We are at around 70% booked load factor at this point in time. Again, this is within the context of heavy restrictions in place.
We expect that once those restrictions are removed, we will see a significant jump on demand. Of course, we expect demand to be different in 2020 versus 2019, and that's why we are making a different assumption on our ability to recover. I guess this is quite a positive picture relative to the balance of the industry. If you look at May, this is the last month, so we were able to operate around 7% of our capacity. Fares are up significantly by 22%, and load factor, as said, was around 65%-70% in that month. A clear shift towards the late market while previously we saw 50% of revenue coming in 30-40 days prior to travel. Now it is 50% coming in the last 10 days.
That's a very significant shift in demand pattern, but obviously we have readjusted our pricing revenue management algorithms to make sure that it follows through the new booking profile. A very important principle what we have been very consistent with, that we only operate a network that contributes positively to cash. We don't fly for the sake of flying, but we fly for financial performance still, even under the current circumstances. As Jourik said that the worst-case scenario for us is that the entire fleet is totally grounded. Any flying, any operation would just be adding to cash and would just be adding to profitability of the business. Moving on to the next slide. We have taken a very agile view on approaching the opportunities as they arise.
We clearly see that an increasing number of airports are begging for capacity, and we are one of the very few airlines that actually can deliver growth, can deliver capacity to airports. This is a sample of what we have done already. We have announced four new bases Milan Malpensa, Larnaca, Lviv, Ukraine, and Tirana, Albania. If you look at the numbers, this is the announcement of, or set of announcements for 10 aircraft for new bases. Kind of the way we think about life is that if you resize the existing network, we think we need to trim capacity by around 20%-25%. By also taking new aircraft deliveries, we would be in position to redeploy around 30-35 aircraft across new markets, acting on rising new market opportunities.
We have started deploying capacity against these opportunities and more to come in the future. We think that this is a good way of addressing a somewhat weakening demand through the existing network. By also tapping into new market opportunities and taking advantage of the market consolidation that way, by opening new lines of services and new bases. Just last week, we made announcements of 60 new routes through these four operating bases and opening some new destination markets as well. We have a constructive view on life. I think we want to look through COVID-19. We need to go through it, and I think we've done what you should expect from a good business to do in terms of measures put in place on cost and cash, but also addressing the very issues of the pandemic and consumer concerns associated with that.
Also getting very focused on the future and looking at the opportunities as they arise and taking actions against that. I'd like to make a comment on Wizz Air Abu Dhabi on the next slide. Wizz Air Abu Dhabi is well on track to get that airline delivered. Before the end of June, we are planning on launching the airline commercially, so we would start selling tickets for Wizz Air Abu Dhabi. A prior action to it is that we are starting to fly inbound by Wizz Air Hungary to Abu Dhabi during the course of June, as soon as the market opens up. We would still expect the airline to become operational sometime in October.
As a matter of fact, we have been upping our game in Abu Dhabi, increasing the initial fleet size from three aircraft to six aircraft in the first six months because we're seeing that the current situation actually brings bigger and more opportunities to the airline than what we saw before. We could be more agile and a bit more aggressive than originally planned. We still have the plan to grow Wizz Air Abu Dhabi to 60 aircraft over the course of the next 10 years. Just a slide to stand on ESG. We have not forgotten ESG.
Maybe it has got out of sight a little bit, although, we are clearly seeing that some European governments are taking the opportunity, if I can call it that way, of providing liquidity to airlines, or capital to airlines to also address some of the ESG issues, especially on the environmental measures. I just want to report to you that we are quite upbeat and agile what we want to achieve here with regard to female representation in the company. We are targeting 25% of pilots to be female and 30% of senior management. We are not there yet, we are on the way to achieve that. We put quite a number of actions in place to make sure that we will deliver this in the next five to 10 years. We have a commitment to reduce our carbon footprint by passenger kilometer by a third in 2030.
As you can see on the chart, we have been on a continuous decline on carbon emissions over the years and that will continue to be the case. I would just note that by continuing taking aircraft deliveries, these are going to benefit from new technology going forward, as Jourik mentioned. Obviously, that technology gives us the economic benefits of achieving lower unit cost versus aging fleets of our competitors with creeping unit cost. The scissor is going to open up in our favor and this is the same that will apply on the ecological footprint of the airline. We simply will have a more modern, less environmentally harmful operation and fleet relative to the rest of the industry as a result. We have put in place an oversight process that now we renamed the audit committee, the audit and sustainability committee.
The board is engaged with ESG matters. I think we are incorporating ESG as a core corporate governance process in our way of operating the business and the airline. With that, I would just like to recap the presentation. Last financial year was a record year when it comes to revenue and profit. It was backed on the basis of a very strong ancillary revenue performance as well as a further decline of our ex fuel cost. We maintained investment grade. That is important. It is not only an outstanding position in the industry, but it also enables us to continue to tap into low capital cost financing options for new aircraft deliveries. We have taken a number of decisions needed to minimize cash burn. We have shifted focus significantly on managing this business for cash.
Obviously, we are cutting costs to an extent possible and we are preserving cash to an extent possible. Conditions remain challenging given the travel restrictions and government-imposed restrictions in place. We're seeing that once those restrictions are getting eased and lifted, we will see a significantly stronger demand we can tap into. Certainly, we know how to stimulate demand. We have the business model to do so. We certainly can be one of the structural winners and beneficiaries of post-COVID-19 recovery. We have already started acting on new market opportunities, made a number of announcements on new bases and new routes, and just reconfirmed the plans for Abu Dhabi. With those comments, I would hand it over to your questions. Thank you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypads now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask your question. If you find it's answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel. Once again, that's zero one to ask a question or zero two if you need to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Mark Simpson at Goodbody. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Morning, guys. Two questions. First off, on the ticket sales that you are seeing now, is there any difference to the ancillary component of that? Is that tracking at sort of similar levels, either in terms of EUR or % of revenue? Just interested in that ticket versus ancillary mix. A second question. We've obviously seen the announcement about Milan Malpensa, also sort of the more flights coming out of Gatwick. Are we seeing a move into more primary airports in Western Europe as the crisis offers more opportunities? I'm wondering if that's a kind of opportunistic or a structural shift that we're seeing in your planning. Then just clarification, I assume that the revised fleet schedule remains ex-Abu Dhabi in terms of the planes listed in that sheet.
Okay. Mark, maybe I start. On the ancillary, the ancillary growth, as you've seen, was 14% for the year. It was 8% for half two and 6% for the last quarter, which was already impacted by COVID-19. We continue to see the same trends in the last couple of weeks of booking. For now, no change in those numbers.
Okay. With regard to Western European operations, are we structurally shifting focus? Absolutely not. We remain focused on Central and Eastern Europe, and we expect that the future growth of the business will mostly happen in Central and Eastern Europe. I would expect that at least 50%, if not more, of the growth capacity will be deployed across the markets of Central and Eastern Europe. As we have said before, we would be somewhat opportunistic going west, and we would be somewhat opportunistic going east. A good example is historically the opening of Wizz UK with Luton base and the Vienna base going west and now making commitment to the opening of Wizz Abu Dhabi going east. While the western direction is largely motivated by market consolidation opportunities, the eastern direction would be operated more the regulatory framework changes, accessibility of markets.
I don't think you should be expecting us to change dramatically or to shift focuses. I would also say that we are very keen on preserving an operating platform at low cost, even going to Western Europe. Clearly, when airports become desperate for capacity, when most of their incumbent carriers contract capacity, this is the time to bargain, if you wish. This is the time to secure a cost base on a longer-term sustainable basis that makes an operation of an airport in Western Europe more effective, even if by design that airport would have been seen as a higher-cost operation. We are very measured on each of these opportunities. As said, we are not going to fly Western Europe for the sake of flying Western Europe. We have no market share targets. We have no quantity targets. We are totally opportunistic.
If there is an opportunity that presents itself, which makes sense for demand, for competitive dynamics, as well as for preserving a sustainable cost base from our perspective by being a ULCC carrier, we will look at it. If not, we won't. Don't worry, we are not changing the fundamentals. We are not shifting the focus of the business. With regard to the fleet composition, all that actually includes Abu Dhabi. We look at the group as a whole, and we look at it seamlessly with that regard. Our fleet will continue to grow as presented here.
We will have a 9% larger fleet in terms of aircraft count at the end of the financial year, and some of it will go to Abu Dhabi, some of it will get deployed across Wizz UK and Wizz Hungary, but we manage the fleet on a group basis.
Okay. Just circling back just on the ancillary component. I just wanted to clarify, in terms of the tickets you are selling currently, you are still seeing kind of similar EUR levels of ancillary. You're not discounting on ancillary to help stimulate demand. Ancillary is still a key component of your total revenue mix.
Yeah. That's correct. Obviously, the volume of bookings in the last couple of weeks is not very material, but our ancillary growth target is to be half a euro to one EUR up every year.
Yeah, fine. Thank you. Cheers.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Roeska of Bernstein Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Gentlemen, good morning. Three from me, please, if I may. Number one, how would you view the market disruption currently as an opportunity for further cost reduction on a structural basis? You already kind of commented on the opportunistic opportunities maybe with some of the airports, but where would you see the biggest opportunities for cost reduction outside of your fleet strategy? Could you elaborate a bit more on your Abu Dhabi plans, kind of how they've changed in the past months? I'm certain you had some intense internal discussions whether to continue or postpone the project. In light of the recent developments, what were the most convincing arguments to make you continue at the pace you presented today? Lastly, maybe a little bit more medium term, a short discussion on medium-haul and range.
How are you thinking about expanding your average range also for the European operations? Especially since you will have thought through some of the traditional obstacles like traffic rights or so for the Abu Dhabi business case, kind of in the medium term, also for the European kind of fleet. Could you see longer destinations in bilateral traffic markets as an option for you? Thanks.
On the first question, I think if you look at it, we were operating in a market that across elements, by and large, was potentially constrained and inflationary. I think you need to almost go line item by line item to really understand the dynamics there. There's a lot of airlines, unfortunately, having to reduce workforce that will play to our benefit. Maintenance providers, suppliers, third parties, that plays to our benefit. Obviously, the big one is the commodity. We don't know what it's going to do. So far, it's been a lower cost. I think you need to look at some of the bigger dynamics, where previously we did have inflation, that today may actually be less inflationary than what we saw in the past. That will definitely play to our benefit.
Okay, I will take your question on the Abu Dhabi matters. As a matter of fact, I don't think it has even crossed our mind that we should be deferring the project. That's not us. I think that's other initiatives also targeting the UAE or Abu Dhabi. I think we looked at Abu Dhabi with the view and perspective that likely the backtracking of the industry and the consolidation of markets, as well as a significant contraction of capacity actually ups our game in Abu Dhabi and creates a bigger opportunity, certainly for the start, but even on a longer term basis. We approached Abu Dhabi more like, how much more should we be doing to take advantage of the situation? We have been supported all along by our local partner.
We are having the support and energy of the system in Abu Dhabi, so we are very encouraged by that. I certainly think that the whole premise of this, that Abu Dhabi has got to be confirmed by all parties. I mean, Abu Dhabi is strategically diversifying its economy, and we can contribute a lot to that diversification strategy. I don't think that fundamentally anything would have been challenged or questioned here. It's quite the opposite. The question was really asked, can we do bigger and quicker than originally planned? I think we are very encouraged by that. You will see that in a few weeks, we're going to be launching Abu Dhabi commercially, and we're going to be bringing some very exciting markets to the franchise of Wizz Air.
Looking at it from a consumer perspective, Wizz Air Abu Dhabi is going to be completely seamless. You would not recognize the difference by flying a Wizz Air Abu Dhabi airplane or a Wizz Air Hungary or Wizz Air UK airplane. We remain very integral as a system to minimize complexities and costs as a result, and execute as simple as possible. That also applies on Wizz Air Abu Dhabi. If anything, the plan has just got enhanced. With regard to medium-haul services, over the years, our stage lengths have been increasing. I don't think we have any target here, or we have any ambition here. I think this is just the way we end up with certain things. Probably it is because that we have been focused on a center geography at the beginning of the airline's existence.
Now we are sort of pushing the boundaries east and west. As a result, our stage length is growing. We don't have a target here. I think we look at the markets, we look at what consumers want, where we see demand, and we would source the demand with the capacity. It could be that stage lengths will continue to increase to some extent. We are not trying to be a long-haul carrier. We are certainly not trying to be a long-haul, low-cost carrier. But we are very keen on connecting the dots within our geographical footprint. If you think about it, we are flying from the Canary Islands in Spain to Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan.
There is a lot of land in between and quite a lot of distance in between, where we think we can join the dots and we can add substance to our network. That's really our motivation here. With the arrival of the A321XLR aircraft in 2023, we can further elaborate on that concept. We don't have a target here. Likely, we will do more. Yes, I think we have an interest in the bilateral market. Again, that interest is measured against the operating cost environment of the market, our ability to scale, and to really seize through efficient ways of stimulating demand in the marketplaces. Yes, we have a genuine interest in exploring bilateral opportunities should the operating parameters be right for the business model that we have.
Okay. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of James Hollins at Exane. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Yeah. Hi, good morning. Two for me, please. I was just wondering if your data on the cash burn included refunds, and also maybe give some detail on what sort of quantum of cash refunds you've been paying out. Secondly, I was wondering if you had any interest or would have any interest in the Lufthansa slots they're giving up at Frankfurt and Munich. On that point, whether you would go back into Frankfurt if you get better slots and perhaps why you pulled out of Frankfurt. If you would like to discuss that'd be great. Thank you.
Great. I'll take the first one. On cash burn, the EUR 90 million includes all the costs related to crewing, to maintenance, to fuel, to the hedges. To your question specifically on the refunds, we have refunded around EUR 40 million today, in line with what József told earlier, given that most of the refunds, actually more than two-thirds, go to either rebookings or to risk credits. With that, we're actually through the very large majority of our refunds. We have EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million to go, we're fully caught up with that, which we think, as said, is really important to restore confidence with our passengers. The impact of those actions we've been able to largely mitigate with the cost and cash reductions that we've been talking earlier. That will not impact materially the burn rates that we've talked about.
With regards to Lufthansa slots, are we interested? In principle, yes, we could have an interest. You need to put things in context. First of all, the magnitude of the remedy, what the EU wants Lufthansa to offer to the market is that after the remedies, Lufthansa would still own, so to say, 98% of strategic slots at Frankfurt and Munich, and they would give up around 2%. What kind of a level playing field is it? I think we need to make an assessment whether or not it makes any commercial sense. Certainly, you would need to look at it from a longer-term scalability perspective, what it really means. I would almost say that it would need to be followed through with a scalability agreement or something similar that we should be able to get access to growth at the airport.
I think that's issue number one. Issue number two is of course the environment at those airports. If I look at the direct rates available to the market today, certainly we would have no interest in operating any of these airports. The reason we left Frankfurt was the airport's inability to continue to provide reasonable costs for accessing airport capacity. We are not going to chase high-cost opportunities just because they get freed up by airlines. We look at this opportunity. I think our interest is significantly conditioned on scalability and cost. If those issues can be addressed effectively, yes, maybe we would further look at it. If not, I think we would just walk away from this.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jarrod Castle at UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you, and good morning. Three, if I may. I know you gave a bit of color on 2Q in terms of 60% capacity. I'd just be interested to get a little bit of profile as we move through the months, how that would ramp up. Are you starting on 40% and then going to 60% and then going a little bit higher, maybe 80%, to kind of get to the 60 % blended? Secondly, just looking at the appendix, your jet fuel, you've hedged 90%, and historically, you've tended to be more in the 55%-60% range. Is that just more opportunistically that you think fuel prices are going up, or have you changed the thinking about the fuel hedge itself? Just overall, obviously, we've seen airlines get financial aid, and some of the generally accepted structure of the industry has changed.
How would you see the industry now in kind of three, four years' time, developing now? Thanks.
Let me start with the capacity. To be honest, we don't know. We would be irresponsible to give you a specific plan here. We think that 60% is achievable based on some empirical evidence. As said, we have a few markets that have been ramped up already to above 60% of capacity. Once restrictions are removed, clearly you see demand coming back quite strongly. Actually stronger than what you would believe, or what we all would believe at this point in time. This is totally down to the discretions of the government, and we don't control that. We are assuming here that throughout the summer, we will be facing a much better environment, a much more normalized regulatory framework, and most of the restrictions would be eased, especially when it comes to flight bans, quarantine measures, and those sort of issues.
We don't have a specific plan here, but obviously at the front end of the process, it would be less. At the back end of the process, it could be more, but this is really down to these restrictions. Maybe I would take the last question, how the industry would look three years from now. I think the way the industry looks today is almost like what the industry was 15 years ago. The nation state is getting involved again. The state is no longer just the governance body, the body that sets the regulatory framework, but they have active interest in the airlines. We know what it means, that the playing level field gets distorted completely. There is a lot being done in favor of the national carrier when it comes to commercial terms, when it comes to putting up administrative barriers for intruder competitors.
This is not great. This is a significant step back, maybe a few steps backwards. That's not going to do very well to the industry. The real issue here is that given the easy financial aid, whether this is liquidity or capital provided by government, essentially that preserves many of the inefficiencies faced by these national carriers. Look at it, these carriers seem to be the last one to act on labor issues. They seem to be the last one to act on fleet issues. As a matter of fact, they are deferring the expansion of new technology. They cut half of orders, they will have an aging fleet, a more polluting fleet to the environment. Many of the issues leading to their financial distress under difficult circumstances will prevail.
I don't think that these aids are achieving much on a structural basis over the long run. Certainly, these airlines will be kept alive. I would hope that one thing will be achieved, that at one point, because this is taxpayers' money, there would be some curtailment of management egos and CEO ambitions of those airlines cut to some extent, that you see these airlines expanding all over the place, wasting a lot of money with subsidy airlines, with the acquisition of new markets. Hopefully this is going to be contained, and hopefully this is going to be somewhat cut back versus what we have seen in recent years. Structurally, this is not going to improve the state of the industry.
Just to close on your question on the jet fuel and any policy changes, I just want to say that the coverage is a result of the contraction of the capacity that we fly rather than us adding in more hedges. In fact, we're quite cautious now, especially in case there would be an occurrence of a W pattern in demand. We wouldn't want to have to pay what we're currently paying in terms of ineffective hedges.
Okay. Very clear. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rishika Savjani of Barclays. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for the answers to your previous questions. A couple of follow-ups. Could I get you to comment on the competitive environment that you're seeing, particularly in your Central Eastern European markets? Are airlines in those markets shrinking by similar proportions to what we're seeing in Western Europe? Is the same amount of government aid being provided? Just interested in some more kind of specific Central Eastern European color. On your comment earlier about the booking curve and 50% of bookings coming in the last 10 days, do you think that this is the new profile for the rest of the summer? Do you expect that the season will continue to show very late bookings, or do you think that there will be a shift back to a more normal booking curve as we progress through the season? Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you. Well, with regard to the capacity environment in Central East Europe, there is deaf silence, to be honest. We haven't seen any significant announcements made by incumbent carriers in Central Eastern Europe. There is a state aid involved, otherwise these businesses would have been out of business by now. They were very fragile prior to COVID-19, and they've just been losing cash ever since. It seems to me that governments are making it an essential question to bail out their airlines, and they cannot fail as a political force to let the national carrier go under the circumstances. My assumption is that these airlines will survive, at least for some time. They will have to restructure, and they will have to cut capacity significantly.
Simply, Central Eastern Europe is probably not in a financial position to flood uncounted money and capital into their airlines, while at the same time these countries are struggling with the medical system of the country and all other major distribution systems. Probably these countries will have to be somewhat more measured with that regard. My personal expectation is that the incumbent national carriers will be aided by governments, but they will restore significantly lower capacity than what they flew before. You have a bunch of private airlines, I think their clock is ticking. They would need to either get access to capital from governments, which is doubtful, or from private investors, which is doubtful, too. I would expect that in the next five months or so, you should start seeing some significant number of casualties happening across the region.
Also, I think that would extend to Western Europe, too. When you look at the booking profile, I don't think that this is the new black here. Clearly, this is an extraordinary outcome under extraordinary circumstances. Let's not forget that this booking profile is the result of heavy restrictions imposed on people as these restrictions are going away, I think people will slowly but surely move back to normal. We will see the booking curve expanding towards what used to be normal. It will take some time, I think, to reach the old normalities. I don't know how long this is going to take, but certainly the 60% of revenue coming in the last 10 days is extraordinary, and it's not going to be there forever.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jaime Rowbotham of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Morning, gents. Three quick ones from me. Firstly, Joe, would you mind sharing which are the countries where you are back at around 60% of previous levels? Clearly, that's something your Western European competitors would be delighted to have at this point in time. I just wondered if you could clarify. Secondly, to what extent are you monitoring developments with Alitalia in the context of your new base at Malpensa? Does the success or not of that base depend a bit on what happens next with Alitalia, or does it not really matter? Thirdly, one for Jourik perhaps. I think I saw an agreement on or around the 8th of May with BOC Aviation, where Wizz was doing a sale and leaseback of six A321neos. Are the terms of those sorts of deals proving to be somewhat less attractive than they were pre-crisis?
Anything you could share would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Okay, Jaime. Thank you for your question. Maybe the answer to the first one, the best example we have is Bulgaria. We are at around 65% capacity. Bulgaria has been operational throughout the whole period. In the worst weeks, we were down to around 15%-20%, but now we have ramped up to 65%. There are still some restrictions in place, but should those restrictions go away, we're seeing that actually there is significantly more to achieve than 65%. That sort of gives us the proxy by seeing how the elimination of restrictions affects the market demand. Everything boils down to these restrictions. Yes, I admit that there is going to be overall less demand because elderly people will travel less. I think business travel will come down because of the recession and because technology has been figured out for business contacts.
The fundamental desire of people to move and travel, I don't think will be curtailed for long. Even I could argue that because of the lockdown, that actually pushes people more to go now because they have been so much within four walls that they want to breathe fresh air, and they want to go somewhere. We are certainly sensing it when we are looking at demand and how demand would recover. With regard to Alitalia, I think Alitalia is kind of the joke of the industry for quite long now, for probably 10 years or even more. There is always a new episode to the Alitalia story. Personally, I'm a little tired of following it. To be honest, I don't really care what's happening to Alitalia.
We have been making a totally independent decision based on the market opportunity as it presented itself to us, irrespective of what's going to happen to Alitalia. By the way, whatever happens to Alitalia today may not stand tomorrow, and maybe something else that's going to happen to Alitalia next day. I think we stopped reading that storybook now, which is quite a bit of a fairy tale.
On your last question, I think you're right. If you look at the macro picture for the industry, there's obviously inflationary pressure on rates. The industry, as I think today is the evidence of that, is not a monolithical entity. We are different, and we will walk away from terms that are not competitive.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Lobbenberg at HSBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Morning. Can I ask, firstly to Jourik, what are the key issues on your tray? Obviously, we're managing through the crisis, but when you came in before it did, and perhaps looking through it, how do you think that you can improve the performance of the finance function within the company? Possibly related to this, last year the cash pile was moved over to USD, and that gave us a nice one-off kicker to the interest income line. Now interest rates have come down in America, should we expect that to go against you this year? Indeed, just what are you thinking about moving cash piles around the world?
A final question, and forever my typical one, how is the EU ownership and control and size, and what is the U.K. within that, and how are you thinking about that as the chaotic Brexit process lumbers on?
Yeah. First on the company, the finance function, I think my mission is, if you looked at the first slide in the deck, is to just continue what this team has been doing in an amazing way. That's my key focus, and I want to keep everybody focused very much on that. I think today you've seen that the strategic opportunities that were there before the crisis are still exactly the same strategic opportunities that are out there. It's all about making sure that we can
Really help the business to drive those as much as we can. That's really the key focus for the function, and I wouldn't want to change that. I think that was well in place. On the rates, you're right. The rates are coming down. The U.S. rates are still very attractive. For the time being, that remains the right decision. On the ownership, the non-EEA ownership is 44%, just below 44% today. There's definitely a good margin there. Within that, we have U.K. at 36%. Sorry, the U.K. is 36% of the ownership.
I would just add to ownership and control because that's the ownership side of it, but if you look at the control side of it, we have just recomposed the board of directors to be compliant with the post-Brexit governance expectations. We have EEA majority on the board, and the decision-making governance has been adjusted in accordance with the new lines.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ross Harvey at Davy. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thanks, and good morning to both of you. Just a few questions on your fleet plans. Firstly, how much flexibility do you have to adjust the net increases in FY 2021 and FY 2022? Would you like to see any changes? Secondly, how many aircraft will go into Wizz Air Abu Dhabi over those two years? Finally, how many of the aircraft deliveries do you have financed already, either with leases or debt? Thanks.
Thank you. Maybe just a matter of perspective. We have been in direct relationship with Airbus for 15 years, and we have amended the delivery schedule of our contracts more than 40 times. I think you need to look at all these contracts and delivery schedules as quite an organic thing that can change and can be adopted and can be accommodated based on the changing environment. Amending the contract doesn't necessarily mean that we have been deferring aircraft deliveries. Actually, many times, we have been advancing aircraft deliveries. With that in mind, actually, we feel very comfortable with 2021. We are also comfortable with 2022.
We shall see how the world is going to play out following coronavirus, what recession impact we are going to be seeing, how market consolidation is going to play out, and what opportunities we could see as a result of that. Based on what we are seeing today and how we can charge the business, we actually seem quite comfortable with the contracted fleet plan what we have in place with Airbus. With regard to financing, we are just about to complete a few transactions. We are completing these as we speak, and that would finance the next 12 months, the next 15 aircraft deliveries. We would be fully financed until mid-2021.
Great. Thank you very much. Oh, sorry. Also in Wizz Air Abu Dhabi, how many aircraft do you expect to go in there?
We had the original launch plan of three aircraft, we kind of doubled down on that given the situation and the opportunities we are seeing. Now we are looking at Wizz Air Abu Dhabi more like a six-aircraft launch program. Take it like for the first six months. This is not on day one, but kind of the first six months. That's kind of the magnitude of capacity what we look at deploying in Abu Dhabi. Obviously, depending how that works out and what results we are seeing, we're going to be evaluating the growth trajectory going forward. On a medium long-term basis, we feel quite comfortable with the basic proposition of delivering a fleet of 50 aircraft over 10 years. If you kind of look at what Wizz Air Hungary, Wizz Air's EU airline, has achieved in the first 15 years.
Basically, it took us 15 years to get to 100 aircraft by Wizz Air Hungary. We think that the size and scale of the opportunity of Abu Dhabi is very similar to what we have achieved here in the EU.
Interesting. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Najat Al-Khatir from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, everyone. Three questions from me, please. The first one is, you will be adding pretty much the same number of aircraft. How much should we expect in terms of net cash outflow this year? On the unit cost and unit revenue of Wizz Air Abu Dhabi, are they similar to Wizz Air UK or Hungary? The last maybe, have you been able to renegotiate your leases downwards on the back of COVID-19, please? Thank you.
On the first one, given that we finance our aircraft with sale and lease back, I would say there's no capital expenditure on our side, so that doesn't impact our cash flows.
The financials of Abu Dhabi, without disclosing too much detail by segment or by region, but by and large, they look attractive. They look to be at least in line with what we have for the rest of the network, given the maturity of the market and the projections that we're making. That's it. On your last question on the leases, I would say no, we haven't renegotiated lease terms in general. Those obviously contracts here are quite solid. We are working with lessors to obtain some deferments, but we are not willing, obviously, to pay any cost for that.
Maybe one follow-up on the cash outflow. What are the PDPs? I understand you to lease, sale and lease back, what are the PDPs that you will be paying out this year in fiscal year 2020?
In fiscal 2020?
In fiscal year 2021, sorry.
Okay. As Joe mentioned, we are one of the biggest clients now of Airbus. It is important that we have a delivery schedule that works for us, and at the same time, that also works for them. As we're in a very close partnership, we're making sure that we can work on a proposition that works for both sides on that.
Thank you.
Basically, if you look at the numbers today, we have around a EUR 600 million PDP line outstanding with Airbus. We would see a temporary increase in the coming period, let's say in the next 18 months or so, and then we would start sort of resuming to normal. This is something we are managing with Airbus as we speak.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our final question is from the line of Carolina Dores of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, good morning. I have three questions. First, could you disclose on the ancillary revenues how much it's food and beverage? As a follow-up to that, are you seeing a change in the mix of ancillary revenues? I'm assuming less food and beverage, and more prior to booking or bags. My final question is, when we think about Abu Dhabi, how are you going to report because it's the JV? Are we going to see ASKs and RPKs separated, incorporated as part of Wizz, or will it be just a line just below net income?
Yeah. Thank you, Carolina. I'm not sure I fully understood your first question because the line went a little bit crackly, but I think you were asking about the ancillary revenue composition between products going forward.
Yeah.
We do not necessarily see a major shift in that for the time being or in what we can project. That should be relatively consistent, and we hope to grow the full portfolio at quite similar rates. On your second question, we will be consolidating Abu Dhabi into the group numbers, and then there will be a partnership expense line at the end of it.
You may recall that we have a 70%, seven, zero percent interest in Wizz Air Abu Dhabi. ADQ, our Abu Dhabi partner, has 30% of the economic interest.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. As there are no further questions, I'll hand back to our speakers for the closing comments.
Thank you. Thank you for your interest. I think we understand that you have a bit of a hard time here to sort of cut through the jungle and fully understand what's going on and what you can expect. What I can assure you is that Wizz Air is standing firm in terms of going through the current crisis and also standing ready and pretty much in pole position to take advantage of what's coming after COVID-19. We're seeing that there will be some degree of market consolidation, and Wizz Air will be one of the structural winners coming out of this. With that, thank you for your attention and thank you for your interest. Bye-bye.
This now concludes the conference. Thank you all very much for attending. You may now disconnect.