sorry bmibaby.com. but there's a few errors in your post.
thomsonfly doesn't wet lease it's a/c from britannia: britannia is thomsonfly (there is still, at the moment, some distinction betweeen the two within the company, but it is one airline) - thomsonfly lease the aircraft from other companies (as Go-Fly did before it was swallowed up by easyJet).
thomsonfly have sold seat-only for years, under
www.britanniadirect.com. this is not a new concept here, it's just that we're going a different way about it.
yes, we (as are all the charter ailrines) are feeling the bite from the likes of EZY and FR on our spanish routes, especially from their big bases like LTN and STN, and to a lesser extent in places like LGW, GLA and NCL. as much as I personally don't agree with the mixed model, we have hit the ground running here because or Low Cost wing is based from airports that have NO presence of LCCs (BOH, CVT) and TUI own major stakes in two of these airports. Not only is this a very shrewd business policy, but we are seen as actively investing in the local area.
There is absolutely no way that TFLY are going to disband and it's going to revert to the Britannia flag again. And where the LCCs are taking away our market (the Med), the charter companies are making ground elsewhere that the LCCs cannot: the massive pick-up in cruise passengers, the massive upturn in families going to Turkey and the still increasing demand for longhaul destinations. THe LCCs cannot compete here (at the moment or for the forseeable future: i doubt P&O will give cruise contratct to easyJet somehow) and I think that most of the charter airlines are quite happy conceding the med for the bright lights and bigge profits of mid and long haul flying