BMI Baby Summer 2008
 

I have usually been able to plan well in advance my flights with BMI B with their shedules for the following summer (May - Oct) coming out fairly early in July of the previous year.

MON and TOM have been available for some time now but Baby are very late this year. The customer relations people have no idea when they will be released ..... any views on here ?

BMI Baby
 

CVTDog

I think Baby are late November in respect of their summer timetable, they don't seem to be bothered that Monarch announce early.

I notice that the 5th BHX - EDI and the first EDI based aircraft has just
disappeared from the summer timetable (same for the 4th Glasgow) which
should have started yesterday. It is in for winter though the last time I looked.

As for baby, their impressive BHX route record continues with only Newquay dropped and Bordeaux/Marseille this winter but these will probably be back. Therefore in 33 months just Newquay lost quite a record for a LOCO

I am not sure if this is a sign of good route development or just BHX's lack
of decent LOCO routes.

Still no Madrid, any news Lee.

Pete

I'm so glad to be coming over to all this, out of the frying pan..............!

Winter 2007/8
 

Press release now out on their website!

No mention of chopped routes (if any) but their is a wish list as well

Selective quote from the site rather than posting the whole lot and I could not get the link to work: -


"The full list of new routes being launched on 28 October includes Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Aleppo, Syria; Almaty, Kazakhstan; Amman, Jordan; Ankara, Turkey; Baku, Azerbaijan; Beirut, Lebanon; Bishkek, Kyrgystan; Cairo, Egypt (4 November); Dakar, Senegal; Damascus, Syria; Ekaterinburg, Russia; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Khartoum, Sudan; Tbilisi, Georgia; Tehran, Iran; Yerevan, Armenia. Services to Amman and Beirut will be served by daily direct flights, an increase over the previous BA schedule"

Pete

I will ask my friend over at Tiny Town and see whats happening with BHX-MAD and send you a message, I did hear that some BHX-GLA may go via EMA in the winter. . . not sure how much truth is in this.

*I did see the 'Bye bye baby' aircraft over in dublin the other day :O which is banned from EMA

Lee

Well, at least in Lahore you get a nightstop...

Several new routes ex-LHR to be announced in the next few months.

Regards

Mike

FAO Dumdumrain
 

The reason EMA has all the tech 737s is because whenever one goes tech elsewhere in the UK,it routes its way here and EMA send out a serviceable one.

I'll get me coat.......

FAO North stand Teir 3

Thats exactly what happens!! Annoying for us all isnt it??

Don't worry about Dumdum, he just loves to have a snipe! :\

List of potentials includes

Dammam
Kuwait
Minsk
Kiev
Lahore
Tel Aviv
Sanaa

Regards

Mike

baby's going to be around for a little while yet. The BHX base is doing really well, EMA is getting good load factors despite being an apparent basket case compared to Ryanair's ultra-efficiency and we should have more aircraft and routes on the way soon. There are always rumours circulating about buyouts and sell-offs, but I think that's more about people wanting the grass that's slightly less brown on the other side of the fence.

I heard today of BmiBaby pulling out of CWL next year, is there any truth in this rumour?

I know it was only a couple of months ago that Crawford Rix confessed that they had halted expansion at CWL in order to concentrate at BHX so it would be a suprise if they did pull out.

Cheers

BmiBaby are fickle when it comes to customer loyalty. Look what happened to MME. There is no way that they were losing money there, they just wanted more, quicker. Beware CWL.

They were probably making a mint at MME, rumour is, they had a disagreement over landing fees and threw a paddy.

They stopped expanding at CWL and closed down the MME base for no other reason than to expand BHX. baby are getting a very cushy number there - good advertising deals, apparently very competitive landing fees and associated costs, as well as flybe being the major competitor who are coming out of a post-merger funk. baby could be very competitive if they had the investment in their fleet and their product. A good product, good slots and fabulous staff like myself (:hmm:) we could do ok.

Anyone know what is up with the winter schedule on MME-LHR? Currently showing (on OAG and Amadeus) an A319 operating most flights (331/332/333/338/339/340) nightstopping at MME with an ERJ operating the 330/345 (daystopping 0735-2150 at MME!). Anyone any ideas why this is arranged like this? (The A319 departs at 0700 on the 331 so unless times are changed on this, it won't match with the 330 arrival?!)

BMI Baby BHX-MAD & aircraft status
 

The much rumoured Madrid has been announced giving BHX a very tight
winter schedule with its 6 based aircraft plus the EDI one routing through.

It also seems that more is promised despite the backward step on the BHX-EDI, the expected 5th daily rotation suddenly went from 4 to three a day on Monday - Thursday and only 2 today - more about that below.

Can anyone from baby advise or explain this weeks operations especially from BHX?

BHX in the morning has 7 departures with the 8th spare until 11.30 and
there is also a spare in the fleet all day (most days).

Work colleague on the ABZ this morning got cancelled and his day trip
ruined due tech aircraft. Okay this happens and he was not too worried
although he was a bit suspicious as only 6 pax went to the ticket desk and last night he had the whole aircraft to choose from (seat).

However a baby aircraft was inside one of the BHX hangars today and both mid afternoon EDI and GLA's were cancelled and there was still a
Titan operating as well.

Is there currently an aircraft under planned or emergency maintenance (other than the one in the hangar)?

September is normally a "heavy" business orientated month and not a great time to mess your business pax about or have routine maintenance either.

Has there been any unforeseen "incidents" etc?


Pete

FAO Olton Pete
 

Not a good week for Baby (yet another one) - multiple a/c tech @ MAN,BHX,EMA. Rest assured,it has nothing to do with outsourcing of all major maintenance or component overhaul to the cheapest bidder.Glad that's cleared up.

Baby
 

North Stand Tier3
You know how to instill confidence in the flying public :eek:

Glad my next flight is not until March!

Could be worse, at least they do not have any Q400's ;).

It got better yesterday at BHX I believe, not sure about today though.

Pete

It's true. Since bmi laid off a lot of the hangar staff at EMA, most maintenance is now being outsourced to Tel Aviv, though I heard some might soon be being done in Eastern Europe. When the aircraft return from their checks out there, most of the time the bmi engineers are still coming back to give the aircraft a once over. The remaining bmi engineers were told they'd only have one bay in the hangar and deal with an occasional overnighter, but on some nights there are 3 Boeings in there and the occasional Airbus. The Boeings aren't going anywhere for some time though, the oldest aircraft in the fleet are only 15 years old and are holding the schedule together, just.

bmi baby beach birmingham
 

Had the rare pleasure of a trip to Birmingham today. Owing to Eastern Airways' sky-high fares from Newcastle, had to go on the train, though :sad:.

In the middle of Birmingham, part of a square near the town hall has been turned into a beach in a big advertising stunt for bmi baby. Tons of sand, and rows of deckchairs. However, no-one in sight handing anything out like freebies or even timetables. No information about flights or destinations either. Seemed like a bit of a waste of time/space/marketing budget.

Rotten trains were heaving both ways. Wish there were some loco flights from BHX-NCL.

Bhx-ncl
 

ConstantFlyer

NCL-BHX has already been mentioned in newspaper articles but in respect of flybe.

However as they have no Newcastle base yet I can't see it happening until then.

To maximise yield it would be best to operate an early morning inbound
from NCL to BHX rather than the other way round although Maersk/BEA
did operate it that way round before Eastern.

Twice a day Q400 might just cut the mustard but still a lot of seats to fill.

As for Baby doing it, not a prayer (I would hope).

Pete

The re-painting of the BMed a/c has began, G-MEDH and G-MEDK have already been completed.

It's a poor hybrid livery, not the full bmi one.

Hybrid Livery
 

Here's a pic of the hybrid liveries on:

G-MEDH - http://www.planepictures.net/netshow.php?id=675750
G-MEDK - http://www.planepictures.net/netshow.php?id=676491

Not the best looking livery out there; hopefully they'll be in full livery as soon as possible!:)

G-MIDY went in for a repaint into the full bmi livery today. It then goes on heavy maintenance and will be reconfigured to medium haul config returning to service, late October.

It is significant as this is the first Airbus to be repainted from the old British Midland livery into the current bmi livery.

Hang on, it's having a repaint THEN going into heavy maintenance where the paint will need to be stripped off again???

The repaint is at EMA, it then its goes to BUD for nearly three weeks of maintenance which includes replacing the landing gear. After eight years in service this is the 'heaviest' check which the aircraft is likely to have in its time with bmi. Needless to say they don't remove the new paint job!

Its the best the could be done with both sides of the fence.

Does anybody have a slight idea if BmiBaby will be offering any expansion in any of their bases next year (in exception of BHX)?

I know that there will be between 22 and 25 a/c planned for the company next year and with a bit of luck one or two of them could be going somewhere different than BHX.

Cheers in advance

:ok:

Any word yet on whether this is still the case? Will CAI really be a Midland A320 converted into mid-haul config similar to G-MIDO or will it just be an ex-BMED aircraft?

CAI should be operated by G-MIDY in 128 seat mid haul config.

I would imagine they will use the ex BMED aircraft on the route as well.

The hybrid livery still looks a bit like a BA aircraft as they have kept the blue on the engines and underneath. All that seems to have come off is the BA logos.

GMED-K went straight back into the hangar on Thursday because the interim 'paint' had peeled away to reveal the BA logo on the tail and on the front of the aircraft. It was highly embarassing to fly on it with such shoddy paintwork.

I did wonder why I saw a BMED A320 in the interim livery with bits of red on the tail the other day!!

1st A321 Interim Scheme
 

G-MEDF has received temporary bmi graphics, joining MEDH and MEDK in the interim scheme. Picture is visible on link below:

http://www.planepictures.net/netshow.php?id=680530

Announced today on the company intranet that no more 330's are coming next year. Some rubbish about fleet commonality and no aircraft available to our spec. until 2009. Another lot of backtracking, hopeless yet again.

They're a bunch of manipulative idiots! Nigel thinks he fools people with these seemingly positive announcements and then massive backtracking a few months later. He's just Bishop's puppet and somewhere around the corner there'll be the end-game when SMB sells out and drifts off into retirement...

Does anyone know if the new 321s are an additional 5 airframes to the present BMI BMED 319 320 321 total fleet count or have we been :ouch: there too? :(


babybaby :{

The 321's are still on order. Just don't expect to see a proper long haul fleet any time soon!

The sad thing is the 321 was killing BMED off, tech stops for fuel THR-LON, stopping off in SVX en route to Almaty ( a route that KLM fills A A330 on). BMI have been given a gold mine- they just need the right tools to extract the gold.



:bored: