A lot of the comments have been worth hearing. About the days of the full DC9s on the domestics, the Diamond service and the grateful passengers. All true, however that business model involves charging fares that no one is going to pay these days. The market to London is much bigger, there is major loco competition from easyJet and Ryanair who offer "much cheapness" and a still powerful BA who offer "quality" and of course connectivity and backup when things go wrong.
bmi has failed to differentiate itself from any of these. They built their reputation on supplying service that was way better than a nationalised BA. The last few years of routes chopping and changing, buying a whole route structure from BMED, closing the accidentally set up MAN long haul operation and buy on board have driven me away from bmi.
They CANNOT go back to a full service British Midland, they cannot go on as they are, they cannot cut back any more without driving even more people away. The return of Swiss to the old Swissair routes and the return of SN Brussels to the old Sabena routes tell us where Lufthansa sees STAR at Heathrow going. I think the real tragedy is that the world moved on and left bmi behind.