Good news for the Regional peeps this. Now, can the rest of us have some certainty too please...

Say again s l o w l y, you want certainty? In Aviation? The only certain things are death, taxation and ???

Looks like it's all going north of the border...

BBC News - Sale may lead to Scottish airline

"Scotland could soon have a new airline, based in Aberdeen, BBC Scotland understands.

A group of Scottish aviation experts are closing in on a deal to buy BMI Regional.

They have plans to rebrand the carrier with a Scottish name, positioning it as 'Scotland's national airline' and expanding its route network.


[...]

There have been reports that British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are battling over the valuable Heathrow landing slots controlled by the main part of the airline. Lufthansa has declined to comment on that."

More on the link.

As a regular rattler-about between North Britain and the Soft South, this is intriguing...

There is now a report on the Financial Times website.

Graeme Ross and Ian Woodley are leading the investor group.

The trademark 'Business Air' and all associated rights were transferred to bmi during the original 1996 transaction. It will be interesting to see if these are included as part of the deal.

Knowing how Ian and Graeme operate, the future will be bright for regional if the transaction is completed. I wonder if this will see the return of certain core II staff back into the fold?

Whilst not doubting their capabilities, it's taking on a big liability for individuals, Regional could easily turn to a loss maker when they fiddle with things in 12+months time - interesting times ahead for Regional. Good luck to all.

I keep thinking of Duo who stepped away from the BA branding and promptly disappeared. It will depend a lot on branding they go for as a standalone. A lot if their routes are to STAR hubs and unless they remain in STAR, the temptation will be for the competition to step in if they smell blood. i.e. CPH-GLA on an SAS CR9 or ZRH-EDI with Swiss. Given that 2-3 ERJs are dedicated to BMI out of LHR, it will be interesting to see what fills the gap.

Regional is a viable business on it's own. It will need careful handling and the divorce from bmi (particularly the IT side) will be "interesting" but as long as they don't do anything stupid and have a good idea of where they want to go with it, then it'll be a lot heathier away from bmi than within.

Good luck to the people involved. It'll be good to see another viable airline business out there.

Going back to the STAR implications, what would happen to routes like NCL-BRU which are operated by BMIR on behalf of SN?

The SN routes are ACMI contracts which have sometime to run. According to the statements I have seen, there will be a considerable period where bmir will continue to use the bmi website for sales.

Is Baby still for sale?

I wonder how Loganair feel about this talk of the new entity (assuming it all goes through) branding themselves as "Scotland's airline"?:hmm:

Now that would be quite a merger ;)

G AWZK
 

Yes....................

Loganair? The FlyBe clone? They don't exactly trade on their Scottishness, do they?

Maybe when Scott Grier decides it is time to call it a day someone will buy it off him.

Inkjet I hope a buyer appears soon.

Thanks, presumably as ACMI contracts this would be a purely commercial contract which wouldn't/shouldn't be affected by a change of ownership - however, the SN website states that "These flights are operated by a partner airline" which seems to imply something different i.e. would the 'partnership' survive any change in ownership?

Appreciate this is will seem a minor point for those directly involved but was about to make a number of bookings for the new year based on the current 'jungle jet' schedule and wouldn't want to go back to the bad old days of the pre-BMIR timings.

SWBKCB,
As far as I know there will be no changes to any of the currently planned schedules until the end of the summer 2012 program.

So book as many flights as you like! :ok:

How about BA CF:8:D

Graeme Ross & Ian Woodley
 

A bit of rooting around and came up with this PPRUNE posting from 2008:

"Business Air itself has an interesting history. Although it's origins came about in the very early 80's, it was Ian Woodley and Graham Ross (with a few other individuals) who 'bought' the operation in 1987 and turned it into an schedule airline, that was eventually purchased by British Midland in April 1996. Over the next five years it went through a couple of identity and organisational changes to appear as bmi regional in 2001.

Despite all these changes, bmi regional still has a number of staff from the early days of Business Air, one of whom is now the MD of bmi regional.

One last point is that Business Air/bmi regional has always held its own AOC."

queenvic,

What is your source? Would be interested to know a little more.

Obviously can't give much away but, I can say there seems to be something behind this post/rumour. Whether or not it's just that, Friday or Monday will most likely be the day we find out anything for sure... or not...