East Mids

BMI might not have the money and LH or SAS might not want to fund this purchase but BMI's Board of Directors might have the money to buy it separately and then potentially later merge the two, Sir Michael has ran airlines separately from BMI before if my memory is correct and am not sure what the competition rules might be on the No2 LHR carrier being a franchise operator for the No1 (BA) so he may have to keep the two separate for now - thats if the franchise were to remain.

The deal is done.

BMI have just bought BMED.

:{

Is this true?

Hope so, could be great for both airlines.

Tragic :{

'Two wrong's don't make a right', springs to mind.

Good luck to all the BMed staff.

Is this definite?

Any source?

I was aware talks were taking place, any word on what they are going to do with us?

Regards

Mike

BMI Have bought BMED, there is no news though on what the terms of the deal are, so who knows if the BA franchise will stay!!

Apprently for the franchise to end there has to be something like a years notice from either side, but thats nothing that some Lawyers couldn't sort out!!

The deal was done last week. Today is soley for the media.

Interesting on the aircraft front.

BMED has several A321s on order, a type which bmi are in the process of removing from their fleet. The 3 x A320s are the only fit.

Contrary to previous posts the deal is in fact not yet done! We should know by the end of tomorrow if it is.

Assuming the two companies are run separately, this is not an issue, it might even be beneficial to bmi for two reasons:
1) bmi could phase out their A321s quicker by handing them to BMED
2) bmi could use BMEDs A321s occasionally when passenger demand warrants it, or even their A320s.

Do BMED own their own slots at LHR and down route or are these BA's? Would they also continue to operate under the franchise after the take over?

BMED own the slots at LHR in there own right. I also think that thay own the route licences to the destinations they fly to.

Don't know what will happen to the franchise - one world versus star alliance?

BMED have/had 8 slots at LHR.

Re the 321s, bet Monarch would have them. Did they have some off BMI?

Of the remaining five A321s, three are for Monarch, one of which is stored at EMA in their livery, the other two have yet to find a buyer(s).

MIDJ/K/M are the ones for Monarch.

If this deal does go ahead, I can see GB taking the 321's from BMED along with their franchise routes and as many of their Captains as possible. GB have been recruiting a lot of F/o's of late which fits in with a large rapid expansion. And if some of BMED's management pilots come to GB as well then that would also fit with the departure of GB's ops manager? All speculation but the picture is slowly becoming clearer.

Cracking deal for bmi if they don't end up paying too much for it.

Although bmi has been taking A321s out, I can't see why they would want to get rid of the BMed ones if a) they are in medium-haul fit and b) they have a whole new raft of (ex-BMed) routes on which to fly them. The rationale (as I understand it) for bmi to get rid of its A321s was that they didn't work on LHR-AMS, EDI, GLA etc. It is something of an illogical jump to say that because the economics don't make sense on LHR-AMS/EDI/GLA, they therefore don't work on LHR-BEY/AMM/ALY etc.

I thought the BMed A321s had aux fuel tanks fitted which are a bit of a nightmare if you want to operate them in high-density config a la Monarch - didn't think you'd get all of the bags in. Happy to stand corrected on that.

BA franchise agreements have an early termination clause in the event of a hostile change of ownership of the franchisee, and it's hard to see why BD would keep it in place for anything other than a transitional period. Surely they / their Star Alliance partners would want to move the feeder traffic off BA onto their own services - I would suspect that would be one of the compelling reasons to acquire BMed in the first place.

There must also be some scope to plan the whole operation more efficiently using bmi's extensive LHR slot base and by combining the fleets. If I remember rightly, the bmi A320 which does LHR-DME-LHR doesn't do anything else in the day, and is back home by early evening. This could quite easily pick up a BMed evening departure out to the east, and another aircraft arriving in from a BMed route in the morning (using a bmi slot) could pick up the outward DME. Hey presto - one less aircraft needed. I suspect that bmi could probably find that they could save two or three A320/321s through more efficient scheduling of the combined bmi/BMed route networks and slots. Again, compelling logic for the deal; you earn the same revenue but need two less aircraft to do it.

The plus point is that fewer aircraft probably would still need broadly the same number of pilots and cabin crew due to the routes involved.

Why would GB get BMED's A321's?? Surely if BMI buy BMED then they are going to get the A321's and not get rid of them straight away.

Also BMED own the slots and the routes so again why would BMI buy another airline and then get rid of the slots to someone else?!?!

Just speculation Sonic cruiser, but GB want to replace their 320's with 321's and if BMI/BMED want 320's instead of 321's?
As for the routes I'm sure BA will want a presence on some of the routes lost if BMED take the route license with them, so GB would be the ideal candidate.
Will have to wait and see.