Any word on BHD?

Doubtful. The Regional Air Connectivity Fund is only accessible through a joint application by the airport and the airline, so SOU was actively supporting the launch of that route. What probably makes the bmir route more attractive now that BD has come into the picture is that Lufthansa is sort of propping up bmir at MUC and it could be seen as testing the water for a long-term Star Alliance hub feed route.

I've heard rumblings of a bmi - LH Belfast (BHD?) start up on MUC for a while but, with ongoing revision of Lufthansa ops still a factor, I think it likely something larger and uglier will land on Belfast - southern Germany first..

whats the story with liege, has it been dropped, and does anyone know how the Munich operation is performing, in particular Brno which didn't last long operating under cirrus Airlines the last time around.

Munich to Liege service ended on the 3rd December.

BMI according to some other sites are looking at larger aircraft to compliment the current fleet. Be interesting to see what they are looking at.

Has to be the Dash 8? Most of the benefits of a jet but with lower operating costs. I'd imagine on most of the sectors that jet vs. turboprop speeds would be comparable.

Horizon Air seem to be going all E-jet so there will be some used aircraft coming on to the market soon. The Dash8 works well for Porter who have a similar commuter/premium set up as BMIr.

give them their due I thought theyvwould have sunk by now never mind thinking about new aircraft. If i was to fly with them id be no fan of Dash8.

New aircraft type
 

There aren't really many options are there? Other than more ERJ's. Quite a niche aircraft segment. Does the Dash have lower operating costs than the ERJ though? In which case the growth might be more palatable

I would probably say E170 size aircraft which would give them a bit more range. Would be interesting to see how that would benefit their scheduled services or give more options for ad-hoc market.
What's the range difference between DH4-8 and E170/175?
We've seen BE add E175 and I think Eastern have picked up some.

My first thought also was E70 in addition to the E35/45

Is it a common type rating ?


cs

Looks like NCLSVG is back 6 x weekly from 31May and a peak season day 6 only BRSJER. Wasn't that an old BMI route back in the day?

Notice that Montpellier is shown as a destination in the drop down box on BM's booking page. However doesn't say were the flight is operating from. Possibly another new route for BRS or maybe MUC?

BALaddy - Montpellier as a BMIR destination certainly sounds interesting. If it's going to fly BRS-MPL I'm wondering how a sub 50 seat jet on what is presumably a summer seasonal focussed leisure centric route (unless it's French domestic) would compete against a 150+ seat jets currently flying with Easyjet and Ryanair to Toulouse, Beziers or Marseille. Perhaps a MUC-MPL route has a better chance of profitability than BRS-MPL ?

From a German forum, it's to Munich

The E35/45 isn't a common rating to the E70/90

Given today's VLM news what's the current state of the BMI fleet. Mix of E35/45 and where are each based.

Is there capacity in the fleet or would any expanded route network require additional frames added to the fleet.


cs

Interesting as I was thinking the same as it would be a perfect opportunity for BMIR to expand from SOU to Brussels and Hamburg and possibly Frankfurt code shared with SN and LH.

Given the loads that were reported, the SOU route must have been a rather large nail in the coffin of VLM, so I would not put any money on that... Even if the yield was spectacular, it cannot be that high high to make single digit loads work.

Realistically, the only routes that were apparently doing ok'ish were those from Friedrichshafen in Germany. And bmi regional had the opportunity to take these over just a couple of months ago - and did not. Maybe they were just late then, but it would require a two/three aircraft base and I am not sure that bmi regional has that much spare capacity