bmi baby beach birmingham
 

Had the rare pleasure of a trip to Birmingham today. Owing to Eastern Airways' sky-high fares from Newcastle, had to go on the train, though :sad:.

In the middle of Birmingham, part of a square near the town hall has been turned into a beach in a big advertising stunt for bmi baby. Tons of sand, and rows of deckchairs. However, no-one in sight handing anything out like freebies or even timetables. No information about flights or destinations either. Seemed like a bit of a waste of time/space/marketing budget.

Rotten trains were heaving both ways. Wish there were some loco flights from BHX-NCL.

Bhx-ncl
 

ConstantFlyer

NCL-BHX has already been mentioned in newspaper articles but in respect of flybe.

However as they have no Newcastle base yet I can't see it happening until then.

To maximise yield it would be best to operate an early morning inbound
from NCL to BHX rather than the other way round although Maersk/BEA
did operate it that way round before Eastern.

Twice a day Q400 might just cut the mustard but still a lot of seats to fill.

As for Baby doing it, not a prayer (I would hope).

Pete

The re-painting of the BMed a/c has began, G-MEDH and G-MEDK have already been completed.

It's a poor hybrid livery, not the full bmi one.

Hybrid Livery
 

Here's a pic of the hybrid liveries on:

G-MEDH - http://www.planepictures.net/netshow.php?id=675750
G-MEDK - http://www.planepictures.net/netshow.php?id=676491

Not the best looking livery out there; hopefully they'll be in full livery as soon as possible!:)

G-MIDY went in for a repaint into the full bmi livery today. It then goes on heavy maintenance and will be reconfigured to medium haul config returning to service, late October.

It is significant as this is the first Airbus to be repainted from the old British Midland livery into the current bmi livery.

Hang on, it's having a repaint THEN going into heavy maintenance where the paint will need to be stripped off again???

The repaint is at EMA, it then its goes to BUD for nearly three weeks of maintenance which includes replacing the landing gear. After eight years in service this is the 'heaviest' check which the aircraft is likely to have in its time with bmi. Needless to say they don't remove the new paint job!

Its the best the could be done with both sides of the fence.

Does anybody have a slight idea if BmiBaby will be offering any expansion in any of their bases next year (in exception of BHX)?

I know that there will be between 22 and 25 a/c planned for the company next year and with a bit of luck one or two of them could be going somewhere different than BHX.

Cheers in advance

:ok:

Any word yet on whether this is still the case? Will CAI really be a Midland A320 converted into mid-haul config similar to G-MIDO or will it just be an ex-BMED aircraft?

CAI should be operated by G-MIDY in 128 seat mid haul config.

I would imagine they will use the ex BMED aircraft on the route as well.

The hybrid livery still looks a bit like a BA aircraft as they have kept the blue on the engines and underneath. All that seems to have come off is the BA logos.

GMED-K went straight back into the hangar on Thursday because the interim 'paint' had peeled away to reveal the BA logo on the tail and on the front of the aircraft. It was highly embarassing to fly on it with such shoddy paintwork.

I did wonder why I saw a BMED A320 in the interim livery with bits of red on the tail the other day!!

1st A321 Interim Scheme
 

G-MEDF has received temporary bmi graphics, joining MEDH and MEDK in the interim scheme. Picture is visible on link below:

http://www.planepictures.net/netshow.php?id=680530

Announced today on the company intranet that no more 330's are coming next year. Some rubbish about fleet commonality and no aircraft available to our spec. until 2009. Another lot of backtracking, hopeless yet again.

They're a bunch of manipulative idiots! Nigel thinks he fools people with these seemingly positive announcements and then massive backtracking a few months later. He's just Bishop's puppet and somewhere around the corner there'll be the end-game when SMB sells out and drifts off into retirement...

Does anyone know if the new 321s are an additional 5 airframes to the present BMI BMED 319 320 321 total fleet count or have we been :ouch: there too? :(


babybaby :{

The 321's are still on order. Just don't expect to see a proper long haul fleet any time soon!

The sad thing is the 321 was killing BMED off, tech stops for fuel THR-LON, stopping off in SVX en route to Almaty ( a route that KLM fills A A330 on). BMI have been given a gold mine- they just need the right tools to extract the gold.



:bored: