Mr benip,
Willy Walsh said he was interested in having talks about the future of bmi - huge,
huge difference from saying anything about buying it.
But slimming down and streamlining that dinosaur as much as possible through better IT implementation has to be an absolute priority.
$20 million on a DCS system is regarded as better investment than a BIS that would cost less than $200,000. That decision in itself tells me enough about the priorities of management - pennywise and pound foolish. A company that relies so heavily on Access databases and Excel spreadsheets is just asking for huge data issues and they have them, in bucketloads.
EI-BUD
Flypuppy, I wouldnt read much into this, if you select a bmibaby route from bmi drop down it will take you to bmibaby website, so thats pretty much par for course. I cant see any linkages going forward between baby and German wings, I cant see LH having any interest in baby long term irrespective of what happens with Bmi. Germanwings brand also would be hard to develop in UK outside of routes to Germany (my opinion).
Linking to a company outside of the bmi group is, imho, significant if maybe a little subtle. I have noticed in the past couple of weeks an increase in advertising at EDI for Germanwings. I think you are missing what I am guessing maybe a potential scenario; Baby is dead and Germanwings will pick up whatever routes are profitable and those that are not will go to whoever can make a go of them (Eastern or FlyBE maybe?)
Shareholders will start to get sick of the situation and the failure to turn the outfit around
they already are, what do you think has promted this statement?
Facelookbovverd
In Financial term, then yes bmi is a basket case, but its actually a very good airline that has been badly managed for the last decade and starved of investment,
There is a long and illustrious list of airlines that had a fantastic on board product, but the management is what will kill an airline. I don't think it is a great secret that SMB bled the company dry for the last 10 years of his tenure with chronic under investment and surrounded himself with yes-men who did his bidding. Once the put option deal was signed that was his signal to relax and take what he could out of the company. All legal and above board of course.
DLH have already poured a vast amount of money into the bmi group, that can be measured in terms of fractions of billions of euros (depending on how you calculate it anywhere between 0.5 Billion and 1.0 Billion) and there is no sign at all of a turnaround happening quickly enough to placate the board of directors at DLH or the Lufthana shareholders.