Zsolt Nadas

Head of Technology, Zsolt Nadas, is responsible for the foundation of the Wizz Air digital ecosystem and building the airline’s digital capabilities. This includes data and analytics and cybersecurity, infrastructure, networking, and interfaces with all third party providers for prepackaged software.

“The vision of the founder and CEO is that air travel shouldn't be something that's unique to those with money, but something that everybody can and should be able to experience. By understanding the simplicity of the business model, it can be optimised,” said Nadas.

Consulting background vital to tech success

Nadas has over 15 years of consulting experience, which he says has been “absolutely pivotal”. Nadas insists that while MBAs are great on the ground, seeing multiple industries and understanding the key levers and drivers is really what it comes down to, and being able to take that second step from understanding the business well enough to knowing your technology comprehensively so that you can impact your businesses. 

“Then we ask the ‘why’, and answer those questions not just with a short term fix, but with the capability to give a long term fix. That is really where the strategic mindset is valuable,” he said.

A keen contributor to the educational sector outside of his role as Head of Technology, Nadas’ leadership approach is one of vision, which helps to make difficult decisions: “It’s important that we understand the larger picture and the problems we're trying to solve. We break it down into capabilities that we are providing to solve those problems, then being brave enough to make the decisions, even if they're wrong sometimes, and continue working,” 

Making a real impact with business intelligence

While Nadas is proud of the data ecosystem that his team has been building, he claims that the most exciting part of working at Wizz Air is the impact of his relatively small, compact team: “We are changing the business. Everything we do, every decision we make has a direct impact on our business. But the ability to take the next step from the data perspective to not only give ourselves a better data foundation, but to put business intelligence into the hands of our business people to empower them to make better decisions, collectively makes us better. Making each individual person's impact bigger has an impact on everything,” says Nadas.

Sustainability is part of Wizz Air’s core DNA

Flying with full aircraft doesn't just improve the businesses bottom line financially, but it actually reduces their carbon foot footprint per person. Wizz Air pride themselves on being one of the greenest airlines.

“I think that sustainability is actually part of our core DNA. It also helps us make incredibly quick decisions, such as not flying any routes where there is a train ride that is less than four hours. It's things like this, where we're able to make the correct decisions, where we're able to maximise our resources, where we're able to fly full aircraft. All of these execute our business model correctly and don't just make us more profitable, which is obviously a good thing, but sustainable as well, which is an even better thing for the future of the world,” said Nadas.

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