“All you can fly” – unlimited flights for an annual subscription fee. What’s not to like? For some passengers, as it turns out, quite a lot.

Wizz Air’s new program under this name has divided opinion, with some praising the “insanely good” value for money of the €499 program for flights to the Maldives, and the budget airline saying it was “overwhelmed” by the positive response.

Others sharply criticized the airline’s service, recalled their own experiences with delays and questioned the terms and conditions of the program.

According to Wizz, the new membership, which will be valid from September, will allow frequent flyers to “save money, visit friends and family more regularly and spontaneously travel to destinations off the beaten tourist track”.

The offer was reportedly sold out in most markets within 24 hours, but some customers pointed out a “catch”: those who register can only book flights up to three days before departure and have to pay a fee of around 10 euros per flight.

The flights do not include “trolleys” for stowing in overhead bins or checked baggage. And crucially, the program is limited to just 10,000 people. It also depends on whether there are still seats available.

Wizz flies to 53 countries and carried 62 million passengers in the year to the end of March.

The program is similar to those offered by Frontier Airlines in the USA and Malaysia’s AirAsia.

Rory Boland, editor of Which? Travel, advises passengers to look beyond the tempting prices to find out if it really is a good deal for them.

Add booking fees, seat selection and baggage and the cost to travelers increases, he says – especially because several short-term trips are necessary to recoup the original cost of the subscription.

“It is also ironic that an airline that claims to be the ‘greenest’ in Europe encourages its consumers to take as many flights as possible,” he adds.

The Hungarian airline had to overcome a number of hurdles last year, which it hopes it can now overcome with the new system.

In June, the airline was named as the airline with the most flight delays in the UK for the third year in a row. based on an analysis of official data by the PA news agency.

And in January, the company had to pay its customers an additional £1.2 million in compensation after the industry regulator intervened. about the way in which flight disruptions were handled.

Wizz Air points out that it is working on improvements, for example investing an additional £90 million in operations and customer service last year. The company also said that 1.8 percent of its flights to the UK were delayed by more than three hours in the first half of this year – a 50 percent reduction from the previous year.

Talie Delemere, 34, is excited about the program and has already signed up. She lives near Luton Airport and is excited to be able to travel whenever she wants.

“I travel a lot anyway, between eight and twelve times a year, and I usually travel with hand luggage,” she tells the BBC.

“Wizz Air has a mixed bag, but I don’t think the service is any better or worse than other low-cost airlines. Plus, their planes are much nicer and more comfortable than Ryanair’s.”

Others, however, are not convinced.

“You can join this program, but you may never take off,” says James Glenton, 36, from York, who is still hoping for compensation for a canceled Wizz Air flight a year later.

In July 2023, Wizz cancelled Mr Glenton’s flight from Leeds Bradford Airport to Wroclaw in Poland and rebooked him on a flight from London Luton for the next day, he says.

That meant he lost two days’ holiday, the parking space he had booked in Leeds Bradford, the money for his hotel and the petrol costs for the trip to Luton and back, he says.

According to Mr Glenton, Wizz has blamed air traffic control for the cancellation and will therefore not refund him. However, he claims the airport disputes this and told him it was the airline itself that cancelled the flight.

“I have no hope of a refund, I will get nothing from them,” he says. “I’m angry, I would never fly with Wizz Air again.”

Mark Shatliff, 39, from Reading also says he will not take part in the program.

His Wizz Air flight from Istanbul to London was delayed by six hours last July and landed so late that he had to pay an additional £120 for a taxi home, he says.

Wizz initially refused to refund him the money, but relented when he took the matter to a dispute resolution company.

“I believe that the people who join this programme are not getting any benefit from it,” he told the BBC.

“If something goes wrong, you end up paying a lot more – it’s not worth it.”

While Wizz stated that it could not comment on individual cases, it offered to look into James and Mark’s reports.

Travel expert Simon Calder believes the program could be a good deal for some passengers, but not for others.

He believes the subscription offer is aimed at travellers such as Eastern Europeans in the UK who regularly travel home to visit family. Wizz already offers other discount programmes for travellers, he adds.

“People do their math and I did mine. It doesn’t really work for me,” he tells the BBC.

Some have raised concerns that the program could encourage reckless flying that harms the environment, but Calder believes the impact will be minimal and believes criticism of the airline’s performance is overblown.

Mr Calder says: “I fly with a lot of airlines. If I want to be on time, I generally take Ryanair. In general, I find Wizz and EasyJet pretty much the same.”

While he says Wizz has not recovered particularly well in the past when things have gone wrong, he says the company is still a “perfectly reasonable choice” for thousands of passengers who opt for the all-you-can-fly option.