Re: Bmi
If bmi have a current business plan they are keeping it well hidden but we will see the results in time. If it is like the one they have been following for the last five years it will take them further down the road of turning what was a highly successful short haul airline that competed strongly on major European trunk routes and provided a service that business travellers were willing to pay a premium for and leisure travellers willing to pay reasonable fares for in to a more fragmented organisation with no route structure that supports business travel and a base that does not appeal to leisure travellers in the main other than as a transfer point where they now won't interline your baggage making LHR more unattractive than it is already to many people. Long haul routes will develop further at the cost of short haul and there will be no passengers to interline to long haul from their short haul network and no onwards connections for long haul inbound so their routes will be of dubious worth.
Assuming they get rights in to the US from LHR, to get the slots they need to compete with BA they would have to decimate the current hopeless offering and they still would not match the others. After all, is one BD rotation to JFK going to affect travel in the market when BA operate seven rotations on that route alone? I think not. I'm a *G card holder who has not set foot on BD since May last year and I can't see me doing it any time soon as although I was brand loyal for many years they pushed me too far in terms of schedules and poor service that I moved everything I spent with them to BA and now I wonder why I put up with them for so long. Do they really think that people are going to opt to pay Premium Economy fares that cost more than Business Class did 12 months ago for the current level of service and paid for food? That thinking is crazy. I know many others in the same position and I don't think there is anything much they could do to recover the business that they have thrown back in our faces with their chaotic, negligent management. They supposedly introduced the August 2005 changes after surveying 10 000 people, does anyone know anyone who was surveyed, I don't and don't know anyone who does. They recently surveyed 200 former business class travellers who were also members of Diamond Club, I know more than 20 people who were surveyed then - does that tell you anything about the 10 000?
Their chances of turning things around? None.