Well according to the Derby Evening Telegraph on Tuesday night, BMI Baby management are very annoyed with Nottingham EMA management because they are constantly lowering their airport costs to attract more low-cost airlines in, like Easyjet and Ryanair.
BMI Baby said that they would never have opened up a new base at Birmingham if NEMA hadn't this obsession with getting in as many low-cost airlines based as possible.
Apparently BMI Baby wanted to put all of their money into NEMA and make it a super-hub. But they said that they didn't have much choice but to open up at Birmingham because Easyjet and Ryanair are constantly tring to snatch their routes from them which is obviously making some of their routes highly competitive so unpopular and therefore needing to be axed.
They said examples included Faro which had to be significantly reduced to just a Saturday departure from summer 2003 from daily in the winter 2002/3 season due to fierce competition from Easyjet. Other examples include Ryanair to Dublin and Gerona/Barcelona, and Easyjet to Alicante, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Malaga and Prague.
To be honest, I think BMI are hypocritical. They open up a new base at Brum where there is My Travel Lite doing almost half of their new routes like Knock, Alicante and Malaga. Plus they introduce Edinburgh when both Flybe and BA are on the route. And if thats not enough, they've got to compete with ThomsonFly at nearby Coventry on many of these routes... Talk about a bloodbath waiting to happen!! (As predicted my O'Leary - Ryanair boss).
And by the way, I think BMI Baby are an awful airline. I've flown with them from Glasgow to NEMA and Belfast Intl to NEMA. Well how shall I put it... the cabin cre are as rough as hell... they speak commonly and they look tatty in those awful t-shirts
And.. the prices are a rip-off... A cup of coffee or tea costs £1.50 where as Easyjet charge 60p. Also they can't seem to operate their aircraft properly.