Originally Posted by
frontcheck
EI-BUD
One of the reasons for bmi,s load factors appearing to be down on last year is yield. They would rather have one customer pay £150.00 for the seat than 150 paying £1.00 for the privelage.
That certainly is NOT the case as of now. Take a look at LBA-LHR. Most flights, most days have loads of availability of £0.00+tax (comes to about £25 one way). Thats for flights departing towards the end of the month and onwards. bmi managers must have had yet another change of heart!
The last time I flew this route (BD 419 on a FRI) it was pretty empty, >70 pax on board a 319. Mostly business passengers, however, so likely to be higher yielding. Perhaps bmi is working hard on yield and trying to push load factors up at the same time. I hope they succeed, because the LBA based crews are pleasent, effecient and professional. In my opinion bmi is a class act in the air and on the ground. Shame about the management though.....
On another note, why are so many ERJ always hanging around @ Leeds? They regularly seem to be closed up, with little activity. Whats the utilisation on these machines like? Where are they used to?
Finally I think that if bmi were to order 20 aircraft, we could perhaps see a mix of E170s and E190/195's and a merger of baby into mainline and/or regional. I think that bmi could do what SAS has done with snowflake and use baby as a marketing brand throughout the combined bmi and bmibaby networks. Im not bashing baby here, but I doubt their costs are all that low, compared to others in the market. The seperation between BD and WW seem slim at best? They use co-branded desks at MAN, and Ive also seen "flybmi.com" on the catering equipment on a WW 737!
Now that BD itself offers a buy-on-board service, whats the point of WW?