No malice intended, Duir - just telling it the way it is. The rights and wrongs leading up to the present situation won't help; mainline pilots were very much against the introduction of the 145s to LHR;- "thin end of the wedge" comes to mind. More 145s followed 'at weekends only' while the A320s were off making money on charters, all very sensible but still that nagging doubt that something wasn't right, and all against the backdrop that most of these operations were outside the scope agreement.
Maybe the mainline pilots should have put their foot down and demanded the proper implementation of the scope agreement there and then. This may well have threatened Regional jobs. Trouble is, we could see that there was a degree of merit in the 'temporary' use of the 145s.
The bottom line is that the slots are Mainline slots, and the operation falls foul of the scope agreement; i.e. "aircraft flown into LHR are to be flown by Mainline pilots" (excluding those subject to an agreed alleviation).
Maybe if an agreement had been thrashed out years ago between Mainline & Regional there would be an agreed mechanism for sorting this mess out. Maybe if marketing had done a better job of selling some of the routes that the 145 is operating, maybe if a bit more effort was made to open up (and not pull off) routes into new destinations, maybe if the old man hadn't bled this airline dry over the last 10 years. - maybe................
All of this is typical of the approach that bmi have taken over the years; everything seems to have been concieved on the back of a fag packet without wanting to commit any more than absolute minimum resource; now that we have proper management in place (I hope);- we are all paying the price of the "Rodney & Del Boy" legacy that has been left behind.
Good Luck.
S.R.