bmi services out of LHR operated for Swiss / Lufthansa / Lufthansa Italia feature the customer airline's inflight service. bmi flights to MXP / DRS / HAM operate on dedicated aircraft with LH interiors. LH style interiors are planned to be fitted to all bmi's shorthaul main line aircraft this year.

First A319 (DBCK) in the new bmi flavoured LH interior is due back into service tomorrow night.

Airline BMI reviews UK domestic flights at Heathrow - Telegraph


Wednesday is the announcement day it seems.

If indeed bmi announces the closure of their GLA-LHR route Wednesday, quite some people here will have red faces!

I don't know what the outcome will be, but the route is officially lossmaking, contrary to what many seemed to believe, so it certainly isn't as improbable as some here have made it sound.

LH could very well have decided to let BD make better use of it's valuable LHR slots than to fly domestic lossmaking routes, while at the same time link GLA to their group's network in a different and most likely also more profitable way, e.g. via BRU or FRA for instance.

As such, if indeed GLA-LHR gets axed, I have a feeling GLA-FRA or GLA-BRU will start, something which might very well be beneficial to the bottom line for the LH group as a whole, while any domestic market share could easily be rolled over to a GLA-STN flight on bmi baby.

Random flyer seen eating hat?
 

Interesting article in the Torygraph that

I think the Conservatives were plain wrong on R3 at LHR, the jobs and investment during construction would have been a useful boost to the construction industry if timed to follow the end of the heavy build phase of the Olympic sites.

I don't buy the green argument on LHR what is green about holding inbound as a routine most days? this just does not happen else where in Europe, back at min clean at 8000 feet is very un green.

I would have built a full length runway but restricted the type of aircraft to nothing bigger than a A321/737-800 and made it domestic & European only. That way you would keep the noise down remove the holding but still have a full length runway when either of the others are out of service for any reason.

Interesting that the paper speculates that bmibaby might "step in on the GLA STN route"

Why would loyal BD flyers decide to fly on bmibaby to Stansted, when Easy already flies that route offering, no doubt, a better schedule on more comfortable aircraft?

CPH
 

What leads you to think any announcement will be Wednesday?

Have to agree with you re STN & Easy

If you need to go to LHR then you would switch to BA or stay with bmi out of EDI

If STN is better then you'll already be using Easy

My bet is a reduction in frequency from Summer timetable with a full pull out at the end of the Summer this would allow 3 months of consultation with based crews plus 3 months notice re GLA

Virgin seem to do OK ex LHR with little or no feeder traffic

I reckon LH must be concerned at EK hub building with traffic from GLA MAN NCL BHX that would once have gone via LHR

Herr Wolfgang is in Scotland on Wednesday.

base closure ?
 

I cant see the GLA LHR route closing. . . if anything it could be the closure of the GLA crew base, just as bmi did with DUB. DUB has reduced to 4 rotations and no night stop a/c and has really turned the fortunes of the base around.
The plan to reduce the domestics to 5 rotations is still on the table however LH have said that if a base can keep profits up with 6 flights then they will keep their 6 ie BHD LHR.

How profitable - or otherwise - is abz-lhr, given that it is a route in part operated with the Regional Jet?

Strange how in the telegraph article, bmi states its too expensive to operate a regional jet into LHR, but then downgrades MAN to the very same type of jet?

Obviously no intenetion of keeping that route then.....not that we need them :rolleyes:

They have to operate the smaller aircraft, because they can't fill the Airbus... and would make even more of a loss if they even tried to, compared with operating the Embraer which they still can't fill... but the slots are the most valuable, they would operate "ghost flights" like allegedly BA did just to secure the slots.

I still wouldnt be surprised to see BD MAN-LHR pulled.

MAN has so many star connections already, and Im sure those who really really need to use LHR will have BA as an option.

Thing is though, and Im talking more MAN here, what will the carriers at LHR who used the BD MAN connections now do to keep their custom?

There is already a strong inclanation that Air Canada will be re-linking MAN-YYZ from May, TP on the LIS route from June, but I wonder if QR will increase for the far east connections or maybe spanair to connect up the spanish dots?

What would be even better, is if bmi 'codeshared' on the WW routes, and that way star would have connections to a few destinations from MAN including MPL/PMI/LIS/BOD/PRG and so on, and there is always the rumoured WW MAN-SXF route to bolster the German Connections.

I know it will never happen, but just a thought?

Is Wolfgang still coming to Scotland tomorrow - Any advances on what he's going to announce? It would seem odd if he was coming purely to announce route closure(s), rather setting himself up for a rough ride and bad publicity, so I wonder if positive announcements are planned to go with the negative ones?

Meeting at the Scottish Parliament apparently !

Willie Walsh went to the Scottish Parliament before announcing that BA were closing their GLA base .........:ooh:

What time is Wolfgang due in Scotland?

best of luck to everyone is GLA.

Although neither is LHR-BHD/EDI/TXL etc etc ...

Heard about LHR-BSL and MAN-BSL will be announced today.

bmi will take over the Swiss flights.
MAN-BSL 5 weekly and LHR-BSL 19 weekly op. by bmi A319.
On the other side Swiss will cancel BSL-LCY.