Favourites for bmi baby 2nd base......
I do hope bmi baby choose Teesside for their 2nd base - it has a lot of potential to offer a low-fares carrier.
Firstly, there is no significant low-fares presence in the north-east of England, except Go's NCL-STN, and Ryanair's MME-DUB services. Also, MME has a very large catchment area, stretching from as far north as Tyneside and Northumberland, south into Yorkshire, and as far west as Cumbria.
bmi, despite selling off their ground handling business off to Aviance at MME, still have their own engineering presence, and their relationship with Teesside Airport goes back over 30 years, as MME was the first BD route from LHR. If you look on the MME website, it mentions that bmi british midland have agreed to maintain their LHR route at the current level for at least a further 3 years, not ruling out the possibility of extra services or new routes from MME. Also, the airport are aiming to increase their pax numbers from the current figure of around 750,000 per year to approx 2,000,000 per year by 2010. This seems a bit ambitious given the current scheduled operations ex-MME, and the fact that charter seat availability ex-MME is down on last year.
Do they know something we don't?!
Then again, the rumours are suggesting Southampton as the 2nd base...............anyone know anything else??