It's excellent news about BMI Regional. It will be interesting to see what they have planned. Quite a few of BMI Regionals routes link *A hubs and are used by passengers to connect to international services with *A members. It will be interesting to see if those routes can be successful now the airline is not part of *A.
I think to make the business a success they will need to make the following changes to there routes, fleet and bases.
Routes
1. Expand the current BD Regional partnership with SN. They could paint a handful of there ER4's into SN livery, have there crew wear SN uniform and onboard offer a SN product. With the aircraft being used to operate on the current routes that BD op independently from EDI, EMA, LBA to BRU as well as the routes to BRU from BRS and NCL that BD currently op on behalf of SN
2. Starts talks with VS and if VS are serious about bidding for the slots released by IAG for flights to ABZ and EDI from LHR. They could operate the flights on behalf of VS and be branded as VS express or Regional operated by BMI Regional. This could also lead to opening a VS route to MAN from LHR
I think the current BD Regional routes from Aberdeen to Groningen, Manchester and Norwich as well as the routes from Manchester to Edinburgh and Lyon will be closed. The future of there other routes will depend on a number of factorrs. The remaining routes and factors are:
ABZ to EBJ & NWI - The future of these routes will depend upon securing a contract with a major oil company to transport employees from ESJ to ABZ
EDI & GLA to CPH - These routes will continue to operate if they can continue to operate under the SK codeshare.
EDI to ZRH - Possibility of surviving if they can op under code share with LX.
EMA to FRA - Possibility of surviving if they can op under code share with LH.
Bases
BD Regional currently have crew based at ABZ, EDI, EMA, GLA, LBA and MAN. I can see BD cutting these bases back to just two, those being ABZ and EDI.
If the SN agreement does happen, then the crew for those flights would probably be all EDI based and aircraft and crews could be rotated at BRU.
Fleet
The regional fleet of 19 aircraft will probably drop to 15 with the 4 37 seater ER3's being removed from the fleet