Tony_EM & jetset747 - glad you agree!!
Max Angle - I'm referring to recent times. I agree that Bish's men are some of the finest at "cooking the books" but I can't imagine for one second that they didn't actually make a loss last year. Normally, they'd plead poverty by expecting the troops to believe that the company has lost or made a very small amount (e.g. <£3m). However, last years posted loss of £24m (the company's biggest loss) was a huge increase on anything previously seen. As Tony_EM mentioned, much of the profits in recent years have been from the sale of extraordinary items such as the ground handling, spare engines, etc. This year, the cupboard was bare - that coupled with a pretty harsh trading environment means, I believe, they must have lost some cash along the way. Next years projected loss of £10m+ is not all that inspiring either.
Also, don't forget bmi are continually propped up by an agreement between themselves, Lufthansa & SAS (called the ECA, I think) whereby the stronger airlines will help to financially bail out the weaker ones. Lufty & SAS are apparently fed up chucking money bmi's way - last year's loss would have otherwise been
£70m+ were it not for this agreement.
On the flip-side though, you have to give full credit to Sir Bish for getting into that agreement in the first place!!
I do agree that, generally, things are made to appear a lot worse than they are. Sir Bish has never been short of a bob or two & has certainly got a nice big pot of gold stashed away somewhere a.k.a. his retirement fund. How far he'll dig into it to keep things going is anyone's guess.
From
Fast Cruiser:
GGM - next time you slagg off another airline think before you write or maybe you should just try another planet ie PLUTO
Maybe I'm not talking about
another airline.....
(What's Pluto got to do with anything?)