BMI

[Skipness One Echo]

Every man and their dog knows how lucrative the London to Glasgow route

Was. Traffic has collapsed. BA no longer nightstop two aircraft for GLA-LHR, BD are down from 8 to 6 rotations. Even FR have PIK-STN down to one a day now.

Many of the weekend BD rotations are in the ERJs as well. It's worth remembering that LHR-MME was well known to be a goner and they were still taking bookings. I was booked in April of the year it was axed and the Indian call centre continued to reassure me it would operate.

I wouldn't read anything into bmibaby's commencment of STN-BHD though.

[gate 22]

GLA-LHR

To be honest I would find it hard to believe that BD would chop LHR-GLA. Maybe they will cut all LHR-GLA/BHD/EDI right back to 4 per day with one aircraft each and charge a packet. They have just announced BHD-STN with WW, maybe GLA/EDI - STN will follow.

[Nubboy]

I reckon it's a troll at large.
Nothing on the private forum, or anywhere else I've looked.
Just been on the flybmi.com website and tried dates in May and August 2011.
GLA LHR still selling the BD 1,3, 7, 9 and 11. Returns are 4, 6,8, 12 and 16 IIRC.

[Random Flyer]

Was. Traffic has collapsed. BA no longer nightstop two aircraft for GLA-LHR, BD are down from 8 to 6 rotations. Even FR have PIK-STN down to one a day now.

Many of the weekend BD rotations are in the ERJs as well.

Still is.

70 flights a day between the two cities and British Airways increasing flights on LCY-GLA hardly suggests the route struggling for traffic.

Like I said, you seriously need to question the intelligence of someone who thinks for a second bmi would axe this route. Definitely a troll who posted this utter nonsense and I cant even believe some are entertaining this idea.

[Skipness One Echo]

70 flights a day between the two cities and British Airways increasing flights on LCY-GLA hardly suggests the route struggling for traffic

If Ryanair are struggling on Scotland - London that's a clue. There was a post by anna_lyst(sic) a while back with the actual numbers showing the collapse in recent years. On my last few trips to GLA, the old domestic pier seems like a ghost town.

When I was growing up BA was flying 14 B757s a day with BD on 8 B737s each weekday to LHR from GLA. It's now 9 BA and 6 BD, on a good day.

The coming of easyJet coupled with electrification of the West Coast mainline AND the domestic passenger duty have all hurt the numbers. Also BA are keen to move runway capacity at LHR to more lucrative long haul and punted point to point traffic to LCY. Domestically BMI have scaled back BHD, GLA, EDI and dropped MME and LBA completely. They have also closed the cabin crew base at DUB recently and scaled back frequency. AMS and BRU were dropped, AMS completely, BRU surrendered to STAR partner SN. This is a retreat from the old British Midland into new routes that LH think can be sustained. Hence the focus is moving away from the routes that Diamond Service built, onto medium haul ex BMED and flying for STAR partners like LX (LHR-GVA) and LH (poss MAN and BHX to Germany )

Take away the need to connect GLA into STAR at LHR and I think the temptation would be to leave it to the locos and BA. If they announce GLA-FRA then I think that might be a clue.

[Random Flyer]

If Ryanair are struggling on Scotland - London that's a clue. There was a post by anna_lyst(sic) a while back with the actual numbers showing the collapse in recent years. On my last few trips to GLA, the old domestic pier seems like a ghost town.

Hardly. There might have previously been more flights than there are currently, nobody is denying that but like I said, a route with 70 flights per day is not a route struggling for business.

Ryanair cutting back proves nothing we didn't already know. They are in the weakest position of all airlines flying London to Glasgow in that they serve PIK while all other airlines fly to Glasgow International.

I doubt there is much business traffic on STN-PIK, as most will be using STN-GLA on easyJet so the very low end of the leisure traffic on this route is left to Ryanair to pick-up.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Ryanair axe their London to Glasgow route but bmi; not going to happen!

The old domestic pier being dead doesn't really prove anything when you consider flights to all destinations can depart from any gate now at Glasgow International. My last flight from Glasgow International, incidentally to London Stansted, departed from gate 33, which is located on what is commonly referred to as the "International pier".

Take away the need to connect GLA into STAR at LHR and I think the temptation would be to leave it to the locos and BA. If they announce GLA-FRA then I think that might be a clue.

Unless in one announcement Air Canada, Lufthansa, SAS and Swiss all add flights from their hubs to GLA, we will not see the end of GLA-LHR on bmi. Like I said, utter nonsense this is even being talked about.

[INKJET]

If there is any truth in this, then there are going to be some very red faces on this thread methinks!! If bmi/ww were to switch to STN then they would be up against EZY only with 4/5 flights a day not BA with 9, not to mention that it is EZY that is seeing volume growth. It may be worth remembering that the passenger handling fee's at LHR is probably more than what EZY charge for a ticket to STN!!

Who knows, lets face it few saw WW on BHD-STN coming?

As for interlining how much would bmi get from the likes of SAS/Swiss for the GLA-LHR sector? and bmi have nothing going West out of London unlike BA

[Skipness One Echo]

a route with 70 flights per day is not a route struggling for business.

Odd that BA walked away from the Republic of Ireland completely. Lots of business there, they weren't making money. I've been flying domestically out of GLA since 1991, I'm not unfamiliar with the market. It has been apparent of late, that the market was under serious pressure. I do this for a living, it's not escaped my notice.

EDI-LCY is perhaps the honourable exception. You seem very sure to dismiss this. A clear and ongoing cutback on capacity has been apparent on bmi's whole BD coded short haul network. It's not as if they're adding capcity and frequency into this apparent goldmine. I agree with you, it seems an unlikely withdrawal on the face of it given the connections. SAS can connect through GLA-CPH on BMR and Air Canada are no strangers to GLA. It may be that LH would prefer LH to feed somewhere more German. We shall see.

You dismissed my Ryanair point. Odd that they have seen a TEN daily Glasgow PIK-London service collapse to a single daily rotation with the threat of the axe yet you exepct GLA-LHR on BMI to be a good moneymaker. I would bet that the dedicated A319 would more being redeployed on a route that DIDN'T have 70 flights a day. I recall when they had two B737s on the route. One did
BD1 / 2 / 5 / 6 / 9 / 10 / 13 / 14
BD16 / 3 / 4 / 7 / 8 / 11 / 12 / 15.

God I'm getting old. Mind you, it used to cost three times as much in real terms.

[TCX69]

bmi's last ex-B|Med A/C to be repainted, G-MEDF, was ferried to EMA on 9th Jan for repaint into the full bmi livery & to have it's new interiors.

All of the fleet will now wear the current bmi livery (obv except the 757) & the following A/C already have the new brown interiors:

G-MEDG
G-MEDH
G-MEDJ

With the rest to follow in due course.

[firstchoice7e7]

Well i would be surprised if the route got the chop, this means no STAR flights to a STAR europe hub (except CPH) . If if does get the chop then surely a GLA-FRA, or GLA-ZRH must commence?

[SN146]

Mind you, the nearest LH hub is not FRA, but BRU which is better located for connections to Europe and the US than further away FRA, not to mention MUC or ZRH.

Already today, BRU seems to be the preferred connecting point within the LH group for all flights from the British regional airports to Europe and the US/Canada, so I wouldn't be surprised if BD/SN start a GLA-BRU flight on E-jet, if indeed LHR-GLA get axed.

[anna_list]

LON - GLA market

Hi,

Apologies - this is slightly off-topic, but hopefully of interest (Skipness - thanks for remembering!).

Here is a chart of the London - Glasgow market since 2001 (from CAA data). It proves nor disproves the claim about bmi and LHR-GLA, but it does show the extent to which passenger numbers have fallen - they are now at the lowest level since 2001.

I have highlighted the peak years on each route. LCY-GLA is the only route currently at its peak. The figures also suggest that Ryanair have been hit hardest on their STN-PIK route.

Passenger numbers on LHR-GLA are down by about a third since 2004. We don't have the full 2010 figures yet, but they were down even further in the first part of the year, before showing modest increases for the last couple of months.

Never say never... especially where bmi are concerned!

[nef]

I can see the argument that yields on Scotland-LHR are certainly not what they used to be 10-20 years ago (when it cost hundreds of pounds for seat) due to the effects of the locos competing for the point to point traffic. As a result you could maybe create an argument for canning services if you just look at that element. However, these flights are important for LHR feed and what I can't really see is BD (and by extension LH and the rest of STAR) completly abandoning the whole W of Scoland market in terms of connections.

I would imagine a fair few STAR airlines at LHR (with maybe 1 or 2 in particular i.e AC?) get decent feeds from BD at GLA. It's all very well saying that alternative LH services to feed pax through FRA could be brought in, but how possible is that before FRA's new runway opens? ERJs to BRU - not much capacity. GLA management are almost certainly after these services anyway but don't seem to have been succesful in chatting up BD thus far!

Whilst on the subject of BD at GLA, why do regional persist with their GLA and EDI-LBA services when pax numbers appear to have dropped off over the last few years with loads looking about 30-40%? Presumably a few people are paying through the nose to get to LBA? I would've thought sending the GLA ERJ to somewhere like BRU or FRA twice daily may have attracted more pax (at still reasonably high fares).

Re GLA-LHR, whilst there are some questions re the OP given their posting status, at the end of the day this is a rumour forum so even if they are misinformed I don't think it's necessarily fair to accuse them of making things up.

[BFS101]

While the GLA pull-out is still a rumour only, do you anticipate changes in the pipeline to say BHD and EDI services?? Belfast has really no other option to connect at a hub, EI has only a BA codeshare to LHR, and Continental to EWR I guess. Other than that its pretty much low cost at both BHD and BFS.

EDI / GLA and many of the other mainland airports will still have a Star or Oneworld presence, should bmi decide to pull.

[jpthomas72]

BRU seems to be the preferred connecting point within the LH group for all flights from the British regional airports to Europe and the US/Canada

Can't confirm this for BHX at all. Here, LH sends us through their primary hubs, FRA, MUC and ZRH. Despite BRU being smaller, I found changing from Schengen to Non-Schengen via the tunnel isn't great, not really better than FRA. Also, e.g. going BHX-GVA with LH and partners, BRU is more expensive than ZRH. SN has a patchy reputation I think in the UK, and the Avro isn't everybody's favourite aircraft.
On another point, I hope LH will not shift BHX-FRA and MAN-FRA to BMI unless they work on their flight experience. Have heard in various media that BMI's interior is a bit poor, as well as non-perfect in-flight service - LH customers are pretty demanding. Such a shift could be good news though for BE esp if they can put a E175 on the FRA routes. If both are jets, then I'd find it hard to pay extra to use British Midland instead of British European. I noticed though that LH has changed their age-old BHX flight numbers from 49xx to 9xx, which is probably a hint at a change. DUS would still be LH (Eurowings), that would then be the only German jet at BHX.

[Ringwayman]

Wouldn;t overanalyse LH flight number changes too much:

MAN had numbers in the 070s, then we had the split of the 1600s and 5500/5600s then the 4800s and 4900s to the current arrangements of the 900s for FRA, 2500s for MUC and 3400x for the others.

All they are probably doing is tailoring a group of flight numbers for UK to FRA, UK to MUC and UK to regional German cities

[dublindispatch]

Well the Dub-Lhr seems to be holding up well.

[starbag]

On another point, I hope LH will not shift BHX-FRA and MAN-FRA to BMI unless they work on their flight experience. Have heard in various media that BMI's interior is a bit poor, as well as non-perfect in-flight service - LH customers are pretty demanding.

bmi services out of LHR operated for Swiss / Lufthansa / Lufthansa Italia feature the customer airline's inflight service. bmi flights to MXP / DRS / HAM operate on dedicated aircraft with LH interiors. LH style interiors are planned to be fitted to all bmi's shorthaul main line aircraft this year.

[ravfooty]

LH style interiors are planned to be fitted to all bmi's shorthaul main line aircraft this year.

First A319 (DBCK) in the new bmi flavoured LH interior is due back into service tomorrow night.

[Copenhagen]

Airline BMI reviews UK domestic flights at Heathrow - Telegraph


Wednesday is the announcement day it seems.