Wizz Air is launching ￡135 flights from London to the Middle East as the budget airline aims to attract passengers with a low-cost, no-frills alternative.

The carrier has announced details of a new overnight route to Saudi Arabia which will run from March next year, with flights expected to take about seven hours on planes with seats that do not recline.

Wizz is awaiting a range of new Airbus A321XLR aircraft to link Gatwick Airport with Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, while it will also introduce a service between Milan and Abu Dhabi in June.

Tickets are already on sale for ￡134.99, crucially undercutting premium rivals such as British Airways. Wizz has said it plans to fill its XLRs with 239 seats.

It comes amid a string of performance issues at Wizz, as 30pc of its flights have failed to arrive on time so far this year.

This led to it emerging last month as the poorest performing airline for consumer service, according to survey results from Which?.

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The new route to the Middle East will provide a lift for Hungary’s Wizz after operations were blighted this year by lower-than-expected fares and the grounding of nearly 50 aircraft owing to problems with their Pratt & Whitney engines.

Wizz has ordered 47 XLRs and will be among the first operators of the plane, after British Airways’ sister companies Iberia and Aer Lingus.

Both plan to deploy the plane on transatlantic services, which Wizz will not be doing, instead focusing on routes that could link Western Europe with India.

Jozsef Varadi, the chief executive, said: “We believe this is an aircraft which will extend the ultra-low-cost airline proposition from short or medium-haul to even a longer haul.

“We don’t have the objective of flying this aircraft over the Atlantic.

“You will have seen that happening over the last 10 years in many cases, [aircraft] trying to fly between the UK and the United States, we’re not going to do that. So please don’t expect us to fly to New York or Boston or whatever. We are just not set for that.”

When asked about the decision to omit reclining seats, Mr Varadi said it was to help Wizz stick to its “low-cost principles”.

He said: “Having a reclining seat is a maintenance event, and it is costly so we try to avoid it.”

The new jet, the farthest-ranging model in Airbus’s narrowbody A320 family with a range of 8,700km, will provide airlines with an advantage over the rival 737 Max model from Boeing.

It will also deliver a 30pc reduction in carbon output compared with aircraft like the Boeing 757 and 767, the last models to offer a comparable combination of seats and range.