BMI Regional Market
 

Hey There,

Can anyone out there tell me about who BMI Regional's target market is? Is it the business sector? BMI baby is the low cost subsidiary, but what is BMI Regional?

I have looked on their website and in Flight International. ;)

Cheers,
Airmiles

BMI
 

To be announced today (if it hasn't already been!), starting later this year with a E145.

I wonder how Scot Airways will cope with it?

Have to say Southampton could do with another decent airline to give the place some balance as it has become a bit too dependant on flybe IMO, so if successful, I would imagine BMI might look at other routes. We shall see.

FF

4 daily Mon-Fri, 2 Sat, and 1 Sun

Be interesting to see if it actually starts like the 'planned' Luton - Brussels route!

interesting route is there enough business traffic or would it have been wiser to put baby in on a W pattern to catch the week-enders?????

BMI Regional have four ERJ aircraft based at Leeds Bradford, operating mainly Glasgow, Edinburgh, Paris and Brussels. They used to do Jersey but canned it a few months ago. I think it's safe to say they are mainly aimed at business passengers.

Ohh dear, what will they think of next! :ugh:

bmi regional's core business is still business passengers. bmi baby is the low cost division. bmi mainline is the LHR division. Rather confusingly since last summer most domestic routes out of LHR are single class offering baby fares. bmi mainline "pays" regional to fly its skinny routes out of LHR during the summer so that airbus's are released for charter work or to replace a broken baby 733. Regional also do summer charters to Sardinia/Corsica/Solvenia and the odd one for Man U and Chelsea. (very popular with the cabin crew strangely).

Confused? :confused: You should be.

My guess is after Sou-Ams, regional will start competing with flybe and bacon on the Sou - Man/Edi/Gla. I doubt if you'll see a baby 733 down there. Isn't BOH the airport of choice for low cost airlines in that neck of the woods?

This just has to be more of Nigel's madness. Why on earth do they believe that there is a market for C out of SOU when they have binned the C service from LHR - AMS? Obviously the 10000 people they surveyed all want C service from provincial airports but not from LHR :* :*

It would be commercial suicide for BMI Regional to start SOUMAN/GLAor EDI let alone AMS but hey when has that stopped them in recent years. They have neither the right equipment nor low enough costs to be able to make any of the routes pay from SOU. The cost of opening a single aircraft base at an already congested airport seems crazy but we'll see. As with others on this forum, I cetainly believe that SOUAMS could go in the same direction as EDIMUC and LTNBRU. Its just a matter of time...surely.

SOU---too small
 

Doubt if there is room for another carrier there. Everyone has to backtrack on the single runway there.

Nice staff, though, and they do try hard down there.

Regional have not made that many mistakes recently in deciding routes, they might of seemed strange to begin with but have nearly always been successfull. And they are the most profitable sector in the bmi group, that must stand for something.

6

6chimes

Errr...lets have a look at the only recent route decisions made:

Luton-Brussels axed before it started

Edinburgh-Munich axed before it started

Leeds - Jersey reduced to several times weekly then axed due to surprising loss of business pax

The only other route I can think of in the last few years they have started was Norwich - Aberdeen which is in competition with two other carriers!

Name me a sensible route decision they have made "recently"?!?

ABZ-GRQ & ABZ-AMS ;)

Thats a good question - I don't think anyone knows. Ditto Baby; ditto mainline; ditto long-haul :ugh: :ugh: :ugh: :ugh: :ugh:

why is everyone finding it hard to answer something so simple??

"Hey There,
Can anyone out there tell me about who BMI Regional's target market is?"
answer - well seeing as they offer a two class product one would kind of think it would be the business class pax - thus meaning pax that travel for work with companies that want that extra product for their staff and are prepared to pay it because it is worth it - which bmi regional has proven to offer.

hmm not hard is it flightrider, you seem to have got stuck behind a wall - god knows why! :rolleyes:
and just for you too.....

baby - do i really need too??? bmibaby's target market is perfect - leisure travel or business travel. As bmibaby has proven time and time again, you can either travel for business or leisure on baby due to the destinations we fly - an example being ams/cdg/edi/gla/bfs - all business destinations but also leisure when you consider euro disney and weekends away. And before anyone points it out, the reason why baby was born into ema was because of GO and also the business class product on the bmi mainline routes was no longer selling well, the pax/companies were not prepared to pay the prices for business travel when they could choose an alternative airline with roughly same frequency but with much lower prices. Now all this depends on the route, i.e. it was proven that baby was not succesfull on the ema-bru due to the pax/companies wanting that business class product, hence the decision for bmi regional to take over the route.

Its important to know what the demand is for each route and the product that the pax/companies require. You can then decide what approach to take - and in bmi's case its good because they can choose between regional and baby. If they think that a business class product will sell, give it too bmi regional. If they think people love going to that destination at cheap prices and are paying themselves you would think baby would be best.
Now seeing that ive wrote alot and the original question was about regional's target market i think i will stop here......

regards and views from

bmibabyfc

Re the Luton BRU and other non-starters, consider the commercial expediency of smoke and mirrors...;)

My point was meant as means to stop the thread from becoming another bmi bashing and for you to use and open mind. bmi regional are doing very, very well right now and their management are quite savvy........we could do with them at mainline, baby and longhaul.

6

It could have been so simple.

bmi regional-tradtional service concept from regional airports to major and secondary europenan cities. (I think it does this to a large extent)

bmi baby - low cost services from regional airports to leisure destinations around europe.(again pretty much as advertised-but doent really have a purpose since mainline offered tiny fares)

bmi mainline-this is where it gets confusing.....apparently a high sevice standard from LHR to major European cities...but its bloddy confusing.
perhaps it would be simpler if they did the folowing....
* first few row or two could offer a business class, surely most of bmis routes from LHR could cope with this?
* next dozen rows offer a 'tradtional' economy service, just like it used to be...again pretty likely to sell from LHR
* remaining rows sold at Tiny fares to people who are mad enough to look for low fares from LHR...
now its nice and simple....you know what it is your paying for, and exactly what it is your likely to recieve.

longhaul is a real mess, Id put the A330s back up to Manchester on established routes...after all BMI does stand for British Midland, even if its not on the side of the planes anymore. Who will think of long haul BMI from LHR?

Eventually it would make sense to dump Baby, it just dosent fit, and shack up with Virgin, they would fit well together.

Size of company
 

Since you guys seem to know quite a lot here.. Can you tell me how many employees BMI Regional has. I know on the website it says 4077, but that is Regional and Mainline. How many do Regional have approximately?

Cheers,
Airmiles :ok: