A quote by Julan Carr, managing director of bmibaby explaining the future plans for the airline:
Since Lufthansa's takeover of bmi, budget arm bmibaby has been slimmed down from 17 Boeing 737s to 14. "At the moment we are focussing on being good at what we do. We aren't looking at massive growth plans. There are no plans to wipe out Ryanair," jokes Julian Carr, who became bmibaby managing director in April. "Our role within the group is to be a successful business in our own right."
Despite tough trading conditions, he says 2010 has been "a hell of an improvement on last year" as bmibaby continues to learn from its experiences and tweak its network accordingly. He readily confesses that bmibaby does not have any "huge, earth shattering stuff coming up" and 2011 will only see a gradual iteration of this year's programme. Growth will resume in 2012.
In the meantime, Carr is looking to promote bmibaby's service focus. "There is a negativity towards the Ryanair brand where people generally prefer not to fly with them, so if we can be in the ballpark price of Ryanair and give good service, people will go for that. I want people to say 'bmibaby, they're the good service one'." He uses the example of US low-cost carrier Allegiant. "Even though we're small, we can still be damned good at what we do. We don't have to be a big airline to succeed."