Belfast, Birmingham, Manchester and London have since been removed again, certainly trying direct links to the destinations return a 'page not found' error.

I wondered if it was an over-enthusiastic SEO person, dredging up old "mainline bmi" content to try and link-game search engines.

Ah, remembering the times of flying MAN-ORD/LAS in the A330's, and LHR-DME in the A321s. A reduced fleet, but still a great flying experience.

(I flew EWR-MUC-BRS at the beginning of the week, and MUC-BRS was pretty full. Admittedly, I missed the first flight because of weather delays in EWR, but the booking to the second flight was automatic and seamless :D )

Bmi regional have expanded their codeshare with Brussels Airlines to include the letters routes to Manchester, Birmingham, Belfast, Edinburgh, Nantes and Heathrow, all now bookable on the bmi regional website.

So you can now book a bmi coded flight from Heathrow to Brussels? Déja vu...

Aberdeen-Esbjerg seems to be dropping from 6x per week to 5x per week. Clearly a hydrocarbon centric route and the industry is hurting - is this the only reason for the reduction or something specific ?
Any reason to be concerned about the route long term ? Traditionally it always had very high fares.

There seems to be a sporadic loss of the Sunday rotation with no real pattern with it operating some Sundays and not the next. Still down as 6x weekly into S17.

I would say there's little doubt that all ABZ routes with BM will be hurting right now - it's very rare to see sale fares on EBJ or NWI.

I've noticed BRS-CDG seems to have been cancelled a couple of times now.

I'm wondering if that's because of tech issues or low passenger numbers?

Pretty sure I noticed a rented-in ATR operating this during last few days.

Know that G-EMBJ was out of service at CPH recently for an engine change so I imagine it's down to mx issues across the fleet.


cs

Lack of crew is the issue

Strangely, I saw G-EMBJ at CPH last week, so that would explain its presence there.

I assume the lack of crew is due to high turnover? Are they not proving to be very attractive as an employer, or is it the relatively sudden shift to hubs in BRS and MUC?

A lot of people moving on, life is quite unstable there, glad I got out a few years ago.

Lack of crew seems to be an ongoing problem.

Our flight was cancelled back in June for that reason. The handling was shocking.
I, as someone who works in the industry, had to tell the handlers what our rights were and what they had to do as initially they offered just a photocopied piece of A4 paper with a phone number written on it.

Never ever again.

lack of a crew on a premium holiday company charter flight in AUG from BRS

if that is the way they treat their high end market charter customers then they will not come back for contracts next year - handling both ends was atrocious - no idea of even how to apologise for the delay let alone deal with one ie: giving refreshment vouchers (lack of)
the BRS BMI lounge is nice but coaching is tedious

lack of crew for our flight known 2 days before causing an almost 4 hour delay is woefully inadequate when the flight is on a Sat morning when less scheduled flights are operating - thus a crew should have been able to be cobbled up

BRS-MXP is getting some more public flights added to the schedule.

Monday has a morning out, evening back.
Wednesday has an evening out.
Thursday has a morning back.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday have out and backs.

I'm guessing that the Westland shuttle is working out and back during the gap on Monday, and the Wednesday/Thursday flights are because Westland doesn't need/want the aircraft those nights?

Mon/Wed/Thu/Fri have Westland (now Leonardo) traffic. Sat/Sun are short season supplementary flights

Some will have seen last month that bmir are launching a twice weekly route between Birmingham and Graz - others have pointed out that it's likely to be sponsored in part by Jaguar Land Rover given their factory near Graz
http://www.routesonline.com/news/38/...highlight=Graz

Oddly enough the route is not yet on sale on the bmir website - although Expedia will sell you a one way ticket for about £650 - as OltonPete has pointed out, rather expensive for a 2 hour flight in economy class. I've emailed bmir about this. While social media people can sometimes be the last to know about corporate plans, one would have thought 2 weeks after flights going on sale in a GDS, some sort of strategy would have been announced internally - instead the repsonse to my email was:
"Unfortunately I don't have any further information on these flights at present, however, if you are able to visit our website, there may be some updates next week on any potential new routes."

I'm beginning to wonder whether JLR or bmir are perhaps having 2nd thoughts about this route going ahead. Anyone else have more info or opinions ?

BMIR BHX
 

There will be three routes (inc Graz)

16 departures per week

A quick search on the flybmi.com timetables suggests Gothenburg (GOT) & Nuremberg (NUE) - in addition to Graz (GRZ) - from Birmingham (BHX).

It ain't rocket science folks!

Munich MUC to Lublin LUZ (Poland) begins a once daily service on Monday 27 March.

That same day MUC to Rostock-Laage RLG goes twice daily (ex Saturday).

All information at www.flybmi.com