Bmi Baby-a Mess!!!
 

I was told at check in at Alicante last night that my flight to MME had been cancelled with no reason given!!.I was told another flight would operate today but I could have my money back!!!.I
went to EZY and the only late flight was to Luton so I booked it and arrived at Luton at 01.30am to find all the hire desks shut!.I got the train to King cross and have just arrived home.I am appalled by the "Dont care"attitude at Alicante-God only knows what the other Pax have done,I know 60 of the early check-ins were put on the Manchester flight.

Does anyone know what the problem was? :mad: :mad: :mad:

Things haven't been that great at Teesside operationally these last couple of weeks and this is another example. We have the low loads on Belfast, we have Spanair's opening weekend wrecked by massive delays and now a scheduled lo-co service cancelled without reason.

Sure these things happen, but Teesside is only small so you notice these things more.

Would love to know the reason for this delay. Whatever you find out, you should certainly be writing to the airline IMO for some answers.

BMI- things are getting bigger
 

Just been talking to a mate who works at BMI head office and it looks like things are going to get very big on the long haul side. From what she has told me the routes for winter this year from Manchester (Bgi, St lucia, etc) are selling really well. They are also looking at India. With this surge in business they are looking at purchasing more A330's, which were on order before 9/11. Looks like to me they are moving in the right direction...:ok:

I don't think that you will see the purchase of more Airbus A330s, simply converting options into firm orders, because if I'm not mistaken, did bmi not order 4 A330s, then have options on recieving an additional 4? Either way, the arrival of four additional A330s to the fleet would be an excellent expansion for the airline I'm sure.

Will these be Manchester based, and if so, will there be an expansion on shorthaul routes to create some sort of "hub-and-spoke" system in line with the new longhaul routes?

Hi


Well i work at EMA for EZY, on the bank holiday Monday 3rd May we have an Alicante flight that runs parallel with /BMI baby and they also cancelled this flight on that day.
Our pax were telling us on the flight that were some very irate pax at ALC, they had arrived 2 hours before the flight was due to depart to be told it was cancelled, if this happened to me, i would be livid.
Since that monday, bmibaby have cancelled around 2 or 3 flights a day, or they joined up services, like the other day, there glasgow and there edinburgh flight was joined as one flight, are they desperate and just doing like a bus service like EMA-GLA-EDI-EMA, sounds to me they are struggling......
Mike

Bmi Baby are not struggling in the sense that you imply Mike. They certainly do not have the financial problems that Easyjet have.

The problem that they have is no different to the problems that any airline experience when they go through expansion. Bmi Baby are suffering from a shortage of crews and that is it.

As for the bus service.... I thought the Airline business was just that.

Hudson Bay is correct when he says that Baby don't have the financial problems squeezy has. Baby's problems are much, much worse!

You may want to come to your employer's defense Hudson Bay , but let me tell you that if you start cancelling too many flights because you're "short of crews" it ain't going to impress the punters! They're likely to take their business elsewhere. So, as a neutral in this debate I would conclude that it is fair to state that Bmi Baby are struggling.

HB The financial problems that EZY have are a predicted profit for the financial year of £98M as oppose to £112M predicted earlier in the year. A profit warning yes but by no means anywhere near a loss.

Some analysts think the shake-up which is being predicted in the low cost industry will be good for the established players such as easyJet and Ryanair.

For example here is an extract from an article in the Telegraph.

......... we believe that while there will clearly be a shake-out in the sector over the next two years - with several of the start-ups going to the wall - the survivors will be the biggest and most established players with well-defined business models.

Easyjet will undoubtedly have to survive on leaner profits, but its comfortable margins mean it can afford to take the pain and put the squeeze on smaller rivals. Merrill Lynch analyst Anthony Bor argues that the leading no-frills players in Europe, such as Ryanair and Easyjet, could ultimately emerge as cash-generative investment opportunities with annual earnings growth of 12 per cent. Bor has maintained his neutral rating on Easyjet's shares partly because of fears of further volatility in the share price (230p).

A shortage of crews!! You CANNOT be SERIOUS!!

Like we have pilots coming out of ears looking for jobs!

Hi


Firstly i would not like to see any airline go to the wall, But i do have a right to speak my mind, the passengers on board my flights tell me, they are pee'd of with having flights cancelled, or i have been told that on one domestic to GLA that the load was 12 and returning back to EMA the load was 9 so they decided at last minute to do a GLA and EDI then back to EMA, yes this makes sense to save on costs etc.... but the passengers do not like it.
Why cancel a Alicante on a bank holiday monday, one of the busiest days of the year, when either people are returning home from hols to go back to work on a tues or people just going on there hols, there was a report about this in the local paper, that passengers turned up at ALC for the flight home to be told it was cancelled and come back tmrw ??????
This is very bad PR, if this was you as a PAX would you rebook with them ?
It isn't just EMA that has trouble, what about MAN, teeside etc and also cardiff ? all had the same in the last few weeks
Remember a couple of months ago in the press of the bmibaby flight from ema to gla to ema, it ended up doing ema- gla-edi-jer-cwl-ema.

Mike

Not commenting on this particular incident as I have no facts, however on Bank Holidays many flights are cancelled always have been always will be.
Not so many people fly on bank holidays.

That may be true vis-a-vis some business destinations flower, but not for the leisure routes such as ALC.

DTD

Unfortunately, your aircraft developed a tech fault (bleed air on no.2 - pressurisation snag) which rendered it u/s. The BFS service was also cancelled ex Teesside earlier. The hope was to position another aircraft ex MAN to MME but this crew went out of hours.:(

Hudson Bay, what financial problems do easyJet have? I'd like the reasoning behind your statement in your previous post!

Mike 16..
From one who is party to many of the decisions made for bmibaby......you really are not qualified to pass judgement on why flights are cancelled/combined....
My contract of employment forbids me from further discussion, but, again, I can tell you, you are so wrong !!

Hi little blue

Well yes you are right, i am not the right person to assume, all i am doing is listening to passengers who have flown them and also read the local press about people who have been stranded away from home. That is all i have done, i have not started malicouus rumours etc.... just fact
As for Easyjet being in trouble, well yes they had bad news this week in regards to profit etc, instaed of having so much at the end of the year they wont have that figure but will still make lots and lots.
With all the new routes up and coming, new bases in Berlin, Dortmund, and poss new places in Sweden, norway and finland by the end of the year the future is orange....

Lets be absolutely clear here on easyJets financial 'bad news'.

The figures announced were a profit, before tax, of £72.3m on a 12 month rolling basis. This compares to £22.5m the year before.

This against a backdrop of :-

Half-year revenues of £440m up 18%
Passenger numbers up 15.9% to 10.8m
High load factors improved further by 1.1 % pts
Yields improved by 1.6%


Clearly Hudson Bay is going to be disapointed in his wet dream of easyJet going bust. I think most people understand that there is going to be a battle in the low cost skies of Europe over the next 2 years.

Ryanair and easyJet will emerge. The rest - well if they aren't making money now then I hope they have deep deep pockets. As some do.

Ben.

heard that all the current US flights are running full...!

Whilst we are on the subject . . .

Would they have any requirement for part a part time Captain on a 50% roster?

Just to comment on the Bmi Baby delays and cancellations over the bank holiday period i know it wasnt very good PR but six aircraft from the fleet went tech over the holiday with ZJ requiring a complete engine change, a pilot got took sick at very last minute which resulted in stand by crew having to position up from LHR. It wasnt helped with the start of the new flights from Gatwick which i believe both had delays not good on the first day of service but unavoidable.
We tried to counter the delay by bringing in Bmi Fokker 100s and chartering Titan aircraft to catch up with the delays that helped a little but then had the knock on effect with the delays and crew rest time.
There is a slight lack of flightdeck crew but that is getting better all the time and should be sorted very soon.:D

I always understood that a key part of the CAAs oversight of AOCs was to ensure that companies had adequate resources to handle their schedules and that anyone who showed they could not organise themselves properly was come down on very heavily and very quickly indeed.

So just what are the CAA doing about BMI Baby, following this weekend, the "round Britain tour" of a few weeks ago, and other events. They are very well placed to distinguish between external misfortunes such as weather and those internal to the airline. How many CAA inspectors are going through the Baby technical and ops departments today with a fine tooth comb (and maybe even a little useful advice) ?

On a related matter, Ryanair's 737-200s, secondhand and old, have always seemed to operate astoundingly reliably on extremely intensive rosters. How is it that BMI Baby, with aircraft a generation newer, seem to get into such messes with so many tech issues happening simultaneously to their fleet ?

Perhaps the aircraft have been around for a while and bmi Baby Skippers are being conscientous on technical matters ?

All i can hope is that bmi do expand long haul out of MAN. I have flow with them to ORD and from IAD with them, best flights ever to the US. I really support bmi long-haul out of MAN because they have concentrated long-haul ops out of MAN. OK theymight of have much choice due to Bermuda II, but they are ready to expand out of there. Great news, let's hope it's true i say!

Be under no illusion - this company is struggling BIG TIME. They are losing money and being held up by the mainline operation. With Ryanair moving into EMA the writing is surely on the wall.

I think Bmi Baby have found their niche in the market with the holiday/ second home business the spanish and french flights are generally good yields but we are finding it hard sometimes at ema to compete with Easyjet on the Scottish routes although this should improve with EZY dropping Glasgow flights soon and now with Ryanair on the Dublin which midweek has never been a great performer except at weekends with stag n hen parties but the others are generally good.
I can't see Ryanair/ rumoured easyjet expansion having too much impact on Baby at ema as i think you will find they are going to concentrate on the more city break/business flights with Baby concentrating on the leisure/sunshine market.

Anybody know what the loads are like on the Toronto flights? It is good to see all three 330s sat at the gates early in the morning at MAN.

60 empty seats from ALC in May to Manchester... single digit domestic service passenger numbers..... sounds like WW have their own problems to worry about. Perhaps WW have too many bases and are spreading themselves too thinly accross the UK. (EMA, CWL, MAN, MME, LGW)

WW is still a loss making airline - Michael Bishop has said so. However, their costs are at the same level as EasyJet.

I hear that the Gatwick launch hasn't gone as well as expected - especially to PRG, and this may be replaced by a MAD rotation when BD drop the route ex LHR in October.

I have heard of the grapevine that from the Winter bmibaby will do LGW-Knock. I think bmibaby can find a place in the market at LGW by offering niche services and i hear the LGW-Cork route is doing very well.

:oh: :uhoh: If this is true then someone should really tell revenue management since flights are still showing bookable in Galileo.

Shame if it happened, hardly surprising (yields are not spectacular on LHR-MAD and loads are surprisingly crap) but it does raise further questions about BD's schizophrenic route strategy. Dropping MAD to once daily was a silly move if you're in the market for business travellers. Why not hand the route over to JK, who could make a much better job and offer connections to other Spanish destinations (seamless JK/BD ticketing is very hard to find).

Yes i have also heard LGW- Knock is being looked into for winter at present as the LGW-Cork route is performing so well.
The Ema-Knock route is not doing to well at present but that will improve shortly when people start going on there holidays to Ireland.
I've not heard about a Madrid ex LGW rotation but you never know.
With regards the CAA looking into Babys AOC it was just was just by chance that all those aircraft decided to go tech over the bank holiday.

btw, Anyone know how the baby flights out of MME are doing, I know BFS isn't doing well at all, but how about the likes of ALC, AGP, PMI, PRG etc

Thanks
mmeteesside
MME Movements

If BMi are serious about TA from MAN maybe they should look at replacing baby with mainline on feeder routes. Baby does ORK-MAN and mainline does MAN-YYZ but I'm damned if I'm hauling 32kg bags to check in at Manch :D

For routes like LGW I can see the point but LHR and MAN should be mainline only for feeder traffic.

I worked in the airline business for decades and we never had to cancel flights because of the shortage of crews. It is the worst possible reason and never believed by passengers. Lack of pasengers is a much more likely reason.

Some points to consider:

1. Easyjet cancelled several flights as the Insurance Certificates weren't on the aircraft.

2. Easyjet have cut the number of routes from NEMA.

3. Easyjet have enormous loans to pay for their new aircraft, with interest rates rising - worldwide!

4. Eayjet was named on BBC1's watchdog as not having IATA protection for it's passengers.

5. Easyjet has lost it's case inthe European court over passenger compensation (It is appealing).

Sir Michael Bishop did not say that Baby was making a loss but that BMI Group was making a loss. He actually said that Baby had reduced the group's overall loss.

BMI Baby in a mess?....More like a sticky Orange mess to me!

I see BmiBaby has just finished 2nd best uk low cost airline behind Jet2 and overall in europe which is quite good so passengers must generally be very happy with the service.:O

alterego,

you haven't got a :mad: clue about the airline business.

I have to agree with CAP54.

To refute alterego's EZY points...

1. Yes, a cock-up was made. But it was discovered quickly, and the effects were only felt for one day.
2. EZY are flying the same number of routes from NEMA, just different destinations. Granted there are fewer movements, but the sectors are longer.
3. Almost everyone borrows to buy aeroplanes because they are expensive, and you earn revenue from them by using them, not before they are delivered. Finance will have been arranged at fixed rates, and now's not a bad time to obtain fixed rates.
4. Watchdog is a disgrace to the BBC. They get so many things wrong. EZY's compensation is a lot better than many airlines. Just ask the pax due to fly with Duo or JetGreen.
5. The European legislation is manifestly unfair to loco airlines. The EU has fixed compensation at levels that are often in excess of ticket prices. EZY (I believe in concert with others) is appealing against this example of EU stupidity. But the European Court is hardly independent, is it?? I guess EZY will appeal.

Alterego



Well you have not got your facts right at all about Easyjet at EMA, firstly they have not losty any routes at all, we have cancelled the Gla and BCN, but instead we have Rome and Cologne, the glasgow and barcelona finish on 08.06.04 and the new routes start 09.06.04.
Easyjet as a company are performing very well in the uk and the rest of europe, at EMA our loads are very high all the time...
BMIbaby loads are very low, i watched an aircraft yesterday being loaded up and i counted 16 passengers on it, walking to the plane, the despatcher says they are like that all the time.
I am not anti bmibaby at all, all we are saying is , that they are struggling.