It's not about cost control. It's about designing your entire business around the long run efficient production model. I don't know the detail of the routes you mention but I would have thought based on the sort of routes EasyJet and Ryanair fly, there woud be a market for a 320/737 double daily to Paris and possibly Brussels. The train is quicker to GLA/EDI when you take into account ridiculous 2 hours before departure security stuff plus the drive to the airport parking and the bus from there to the airport. If there is sufficient business to justify 30 people or more at £300 round trip to Brussels then maybe they were making money. I'm not in the airline business any more so I don't know the aircraft/mile and seat/mile costs of an Embraer, Dash 8 or 737. On the other hand who would have thought you could operate a 320/737 from bristol to about three Eastern Europe daily which is what I see on the departure board when I fly from BRS. The markets will always change, Flybmi and flybe didn't.

Loganair are taking on NCL-BRU and NCL-SVG from the end of March in addition to the ABZ routes. Good to see them step in so soon.

https://www.loganair.co.uk/flybmi-update-17th-february/

These Legacy markets CDG AMS FRA BRU etc were all strong years ago before the Lo-co's and the euro-star train, plus the workplace has changed drastically as to how folk go about their business and arrange meetings today
- Scheduled airlines (well the ones that still survive) have seen their bread and butter route profits dismally fall away - The whole airline demography has changed for ever.

What to do?

You've touched on something subtle but important. Businesses are under massive pressures to reduce travel expenses. Today many business are taking advantage of video conferencing solutions as a cost effective method to conduct meetings involving people located at geographically dispersed locations. Gone are the days of hopping on a flight, today it's all about efficiencies and cost savings.

You are wasting too much time commuting to an airport, security, boarding and unforseen delays and hiccups, it's just not sensible or affordable for businesses to carry those costs anymore.

Even c-suite levels can longer justify a corp jet expense. Today's fast paced business world can achieve so much productivity through very advanced video conferencing technologies with virtual whiteboards and file sharing.

Parent Company
 

Maybe some don't realise that Flybmi and Loganair have/had the same parent company!

The profitable routes will be snapped up quickly as they knew months ago this was going to happen. Give it a few months to transfer a/c leases and crew and it all falls into place.

Smart from a management point of view but doesn't help the stranded passengers or crew who don't know their future.

Take a look at the past results and this wasn't a surprise to anyone... especially the management of both companies!

Almost like it was planned......

Rather convenient really

OTOH, there is hardly any other airline left in the UK that could take over such routes. Flybe itself on life support and Eastern apparently also not in great shape. The rest are niche/fringe operators such as Aurigny, Blue Islands, Skybus not suited for that type of expansion. And to be honest, I am not sure if Loganair is currently executing a smart strategy by expanding and taking on Embraer 135s....


In other news, just stumbled across a horrible piece of journalism in the Daily Mail that mentioned "low cost airline Flybmi" and showed deserted check-in desks at the airline's EMA base....

If it were planned, then why not transfer the routes over first and then go into admisitration. They are only causing more issues by doing this... (if that is the case).

Selling assets below market value just before bankruptcy can get you into trouble with the courts. The priority for AIL will likely have been to ensure Loganair is not drawn into the bankruptcy and is able to continue to operate without any additional legal risk. If the directors of AIL / Loganair were doing their job correctly, they will presumably have sought expert legal advice on ensuring a bankruptcy firewall was created between Loganair and bmir

Maybe the management wanted to rid themselves of troublesome crew and re-hire on lower Ts and Cs after a break in service? It's been done before.....

Despite having the same parent company, if an airline goes bust, wouldn't the airport operator put the slots back up for sale/auction/whatever? Can another airline just take them straightaway? Surely if there is some value to the slots then they should be paying the administrator for them to give back towards the creditors?

Slots at Heathrow have a high value, those at Gatwick have (significantly lower) value. However are slots at Aberdeen, Bristol or East Midlands sufficiently scare to trade for money ? There's nothing listed on the ACL website showing slots being traded at these 3 airports
https://www.acl-uk.org/completed-trades/

There are many things in the last ten years that have defeated best intentions of managements in a wide variety of commercial areas - not just airlines.

• Do not under estimate the effect of the 2008 crash and the decade of low incomes and uncertainty in it's wake.
• Do not under estimate the effect of the 2016 vote and the three years of uncertainty following the announcement of the referendum.
• From the day that the vote was announced (Feb 2016) the Pound has dropped in value and NEVER regained that level.
• No 10 has pushed away the idea that Brexit was a large part of the problem - but I think it was certainly not a small part.
• In this last decade, the political world has changed very fast. Be it terrorist attacks in holiday destinations, or the uncertainty of a world in more rapid change than we have seen in the last 30 years.
• In the UK, incomes continue to stagnate.
• The Interweb has given the carriers some advantages - such as direct selling and communication with their pax - but it has alao allowed the pax to compare prices across destinations, carriers and (depending on where they live) different departure points. NOTHING could have prepared the small carriers for that.
• The airline world lives on long lead times and, in the past 15/20 years, customers now only think in short lead times.

We can expect more contraction in the travel and holiday market.

DAT taking over Aberdeen-Esbjerg

Not sure where flybmi holds slots of any value. Slots do not have a value as such, it is only at slot-constrained airports where slots sales take place, provided that they are not illegal in the jurisdiction in question (there are a different views across Europe whether or not slots can be owned and thus traded by airlines). As flybmi does not serve LHR, LGW, LCY or MAN, I don't really see which slots are of any value. STN slots are for a PSO route for which different rules apply, IIRC. Maybe at DUS. At MUC I think they were slot-sitting for Lufthansa.

Most of BMs fleet, except a few of the white aircraft are owned by Airline Investments Limited, the holding company for LM and BM.

Not quite sure that I agree. It would be like if Aer Lingus went bust, would BA be expected to bail them out? Even if they are owned by the same group?

also hardly an insult when the sister airline has openly invited those exstaff to work for them and has started to reinstate several routes to start with

Only if demand for slots massively outweighs supply such as in the case of Heathrow. If there's plenty of capacity, where's the monetary value in a slot?

There is a provision under IATA rules for the wholesale shifting of slots from one group company to another