A) How is the airline in dire straits?
B) They said just before Christmas that they are ordering aircraft, 20 firm orders and 20 options, in some form of internal documentation which several people on this thread have seen.

Q. So whats the fixed 330 up to ?
Q How's the DME going ?
Q What are 20 new a/c up to when the 321's that have been in old colours for 6year are going ?

Any ideas

Lhr - Jer
 

Rumours are everywhere of a BMI LHR - JER service starting soon.

will be 3 x daily.

Anyone else know of this?

bmi are not in any dire trouble at the moment as has been suggested in this forum, and has been suggested for some time.

The facts as far as I can see them is;

YES Lufthansa & SAS are seriously considering selling their shares in the company as soon as possible, and do not want to continue the ECA when it is scheduled to end.

YES the Mumbai fiasco was an expensive mistake which has done nothing to improve bmi's longhaul reputation.

YES bmi regional and bmibaby have both been run out of markets by lower cost competitors rather than trying to fight their ground.

YES there is an order, or at least a letter of intent, scheduled over the next few months, with most aircraft likely to be for bmibaby or bmi regional.

I'm only going by what the CX says when it's time for pay negotiations! As far as the 20 aircraft are concerned, the company hasn't the foggiest as to which part of the group they'd be aimed at and it's only an approval to put out to tender. The whole process could take years before actual deliveries happen. Believe me, the airline is in a real muddle about what direction it's going in...

Bmi passenger numbers
 

I would be surprised if any significant aircraft orders are placed by bmi.

Looking at the Caa website on passenger stats for 2006 and the provisional information now available on the website it would suggest that the airline is certainly not having the best of times.

The routes that they operate on there own, eg Inverness, Leeds, Belfast City , Durham tees to LHR are showing major decline month on month.

Furthermore, Glasgow, Manchester, Edinburgh flights to LHR in competition with BA are very significantly down on the same time last year for the last year, most likely the decline is for both BA and Bmi, but I reckon bmi are hurting the most.Hard to say, nevertheless, I still think bmi are having a very rough few months.

I just wonder how long can this situation be sustained.

Heathrow-Jersey
 

Transitionlevel

Two stories going around at the moment, one is there will be an annocement in the local papers within the next week , an the other is BMI have two engineers in Jersey and they will know buy the middle of February what the outcome is going to be.

So a bit of a differance in timmimgs who will know first the press or the staff?

If they are going to start the service you would expect the service to be up and running for the summer which is normally when the clocks change.

If the service is three daily could this meen a night stopper?

The only whay it will work for the businness people would be a night stop with a 0700 departure and a late an evening arrival to get the London businness traffic and most of this traffic would be taken away from the Gatwick route.

EI-BUD
One of the reasons for bmi,s load factors appearing to be down on last year is yield. They would rather have one customer pay £150.00 for the seat than 150 paying £1.00 for the privelage. :hmm:

frontcheck

:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: That certainly is NOT the case as of now. Take a look at LBA-LHR. Most flights, most days have loads of availability of £0.00+tax (comes to about £25 one way). Thats for flights departing towards the end of the month and onwards.

The last time I flew this route (BD 419 on a FRI) it was pretty empty, >70 pax on board a 319. Mostly business passengers, however, so likely to be higher yielding. Perhaps bmi is working hard on yield and trying to push load factors up at the same time. I hope they succeed, because the LBA based crews are pleasent, effecient and profeccional. In my opinion bmi is a class act. Shame about the management tho.....

On another note, why are so many ERJ always hanging around @ Leeds? They regularly seem to be closed up, with little activity. Whats the utilisation on these machines like? Where are they used to?

Finally I think that if bmi were to order 20 aircraft, we could perhaps see a mix of E170s and E190/195's and a merger of baby into mainline and/or regional. I think that bmi could do what SAS has done with snowflake and use baby as a marketing brand throughout the combined bmi and bmibaby networks. Im not bashing baby here, but I doubt their costs are all that low, compared to others in the market. The seperation between BD and WW seem slim at best? They use co-branded desks at MAN, and Ive also seen "flybmi" on the catering equipment on a WW 737!

Now that BD itself offers a buy-on-board service, whats the point of WW?

:confused: That certainly is NOT the case as of now. Take a look at LBA-LHR. Most flights, most days have loads of availability of £0.00+tax (comes to about £25 one way). Thats for flights departing towards the end of the month and onwards. bmi managers must have had yet another change of heart!

The last time I flew this route (BD 419 on a FRI) it was pretty empty, >70 pax on board a 319. Mostly business passengers, however, so likely to be higher yielding. Perhaps bmi is working hard on yield and trying to push load factors up at the same time. I hope they succeed, because the LBA based crews are pleasent, effecient and professional. In my opinion bmi is a class act in the air and on the ground. Shame about the management though.....

On another note, why are so many ERJ always hanging around @ Leeds? They regularly seem to be closed up, with little activity. Whats the utilisation on these machines like? Where are they used to?

Finally I think that if bmi were to order 20 aircraft, we could perhaps see a mix of E170s and E190/195's and a merger of baby into mainline and/or regional. I think that bmi could do what SAS has done with snowflake and use baby as a marketing brand throughout the combined bmi and bmibaby networks. Im not bashing baby here, but I doubt their costs are all that low, compared to others in the market. The seperation between BD and WW seem slim at best? They use co-branded desks at MAN, and Ive also seen "flybmi.com" on the catering equipment on a WW 737!

Now that BD itself offers a buy-on-board service, whats the point of WW?

brian,
I have had the benefit of viewing the results for the LBA-LHR and it is safe to say that it is making good money, so don't worry..
The ERJs sit around at Leeds because the sums have been done and it is much more sensible to have them wait for their core flights (which with one possible exception are doing very well financially) than operate less profitable (and historically unprofitable) fillers, which expose the core operation to risk if things go tech.
Staff have been told that the last year has been the most profitable ever for bmi regional.
Thanks for your concern.

How are they doing on DUB-LHR?

They are doing pretty well on the LHR-DUB, it's certainly one of their better routes. Things weren't so good a couple of years ago but I believe the yield is up considerably. This route has always had a lot of capacity on it (including other London airports in that) and has hence been very competitive. As far as I know the Jersey is pretty much a given, to be announced shortly.

No probs, I like to see bmi succeed, its a great brand and a very, very pretty color scheme!

bmi take an unfair bashing on here IMO. I really, really like bmi. As I said before, the're a class act.

Its good to hear that bmiRegional are doing so well at the minute. Long may it continue! Maybe we'll see them back at ORK someday! LHR-ORK on bmi anybody???!!!:}

Brian_dromey
there may be a number of inexpensive seats available in advance, but try booking within 48 hours of dep. Irrespective of the number of available seats, you will rarely get any fare less than the full fare. Which means anyone buying at ticket at the airport or changing a fare which involves a fare difference end up paying the full fare anyway.

Could this be anything to do with BD being the only carrier into London from DUB with a business cabin? I remember seeing a big banner in DUB in December saying something along the lines of 'we love doing business in Dublin' and then underneath it stating that they were the only carrier who had business class to LHR

Regional expansion
 

Announced today

New flights from Edinburgh to Zurich, Aberdeen to Khristiansand, Leeds Bradford to Copenhagen.

Additional service from Edinburgh to Manchester

Retimed flights from Edinburgh to Leeds Bradford

And finaly

4 new ERJ145s


http://www.flybmi.com/bmi/en-gb/abou...=2007&rid=1067

Good news re regional developments.

LHR-Aberdeen will be an entire bmi regional operation - all five weekday flights will be flown by Embraer 145 this summer. One off-peak weekday LHR-Manchester will also be flown by the 145; plus the LHR-Hannover stays on the ERJ as well.

It also looks as though an Embraer will spend its entire day sitting in MME between a morning flight from LHR and an evening flight back. You'd have thought that they would at least send it somewhere where it could act as back-up to the rest of the fleet, but there you go!

Press release doesn't mention new - are they factory fresh, or more used (source? LOT like the last 2?).

New or not?
 

Not sure if they are factory fresh or not, you are mistaken re the press release - it clearly states four new aircraft directly underneath the release date

http://www.flybmi.com/bmi/en-gb/abou...=2007&rid=1067