new London baby..

[crazy idea]

just heard that a new baby is about to delivered in the capital this summer.....

this needs to be czeched out but looks like may be a corker.......

bmi vs baby anyone???????

[brabazon]

This appeared (briefly) on bmibaby's site yesterday - new routes from LGW to ORK and PRG - but it's gone today. A bit like when they announced CPH from EMA which then vanished (1984-like) from their press releases...

[Airbus215]

Its Official .....

AR Says so ..
"
bmibaby will be launching daily services from London Gatwick to Prague and Cork from the 30th April with seats going on sale at 10.00 on Friday 13th February. The addition of Gatwick in the South East of England further extends the geographical spread of bmibaby and adds to a growing coverage of UK regions served by the airline.

Prague and Cork are ideal launch destinations as they are not served by any other low cost airline from Gatwick. The service to the Czech capital will mean that Prague will be served by bmibaby from all of its five UK bases, which brings to the airline greater economies of scale in the destinations that are served. The opportunity to expand bmibaby into the south east of England is the latest example of our successful segmentation strategy - providing from within the bmi group services that meet the needs of Gatwick leisure travellers to Prague and Cork, without having any impact on our full service operations at Heathrow.

These new bmibaby services will provide no competitive threat whatsoever to bmi's London Heathrow operations. The lesson learned from the BA/Go relationship is very clear, there are significant issues if you are competing within the same company and the potential cannibalisation of each other's route networks.

In addition to the introduction of services to Prague and Cork from London Gatwick, bmibaby will also add Ibiza to the destinations served from Manchester, again increasing the reach of the number of bmibaby UK departure points that serve the island.

bmibaby is now clearly establishing itself as one of the ‘big three’ UK no frills carriers. Although we have some way to go to catch up Ryanair and easyJet, it is worth noting that our progress in our first two years is well ahead of either carrier at similar stages in their own growth." :ok:

[Mark Lewis]

Just a shame EZY and BA are starting up on the Prague route too:

http://www.easyjet.com/EN/news/20040212_01.html

[Best Western]

Will BMI baby please focus on something - how much will two daily flights from Gatwick cost them to advertise, promote and crew? They now have five UK international departure airports!

Especially now that Prague has competition from EasyJet and BA.
I expect :ouch: :ouch: :ouch: 's all round!

[WHBM]

Prague will be served by bmibaby from all of its five UK bases, which brings to the airline greater economies of scale in the destinations that are served.
That's a complete oxymoron. If it is more economical to operate new services at existing points (which sounds reasonable) why start up a new point at London Gatwick to do so !

[Electric Sky]

With just one flight into LGW a day from existing destinations I think you will find that this will be a "W" operation which shouldn't be a problem to crew. Agreed on the advertising costs but perhaps baby are testing the water at LGW to see if it's worth further expansion in the future???

ES ;)

[Airbus215]

fares war at Gatwick sparked by bmibaby route announcements


Within hours of announcing its first routes from Gatwick, bmibaby has already sparked a fares war at the airport.

Shortly after bmibaby announced Gatwick-Prague and Gatwick-Cork services this morning, easyJet announced its own Gatwick-Prague services.

In response, bmibaby is now offering Internet fares from £19.99 one-way, including taxes and charges, on the Gatwick-Prague route, undercutting easyJet's return fare by £1.00.

Tony Davis, managing director of bmibaby, said:

"After only a few hours, customers are already seeing the benefits of new low-cost airline competition at Gatwick. We're delighted to be the cause of these benefits - and we look forward to delivering real competition to easyJet at the airport."

[brabazon]

When airlines are struggling to make money why do some insist on competing directly head-head on routes - consumers may win, but the airlines surely won't. bmibaby seem to have a "me too" attitude which was shown up by their launch in direct competition to go.

By the way will their new routes be WW patterns!!

[EastMids]

The PRG-LGW-PRG is a W on the Nottingham based aircraft. Likewise, the ORK-LGW-ORK service seems to be a W on another Nottingham based aircraft.

I notice that WW have cut back their EMA-DUB operation to two daily for the summer (presumably to make room for one of the two LGW services), with the last DUB-EMA departing 17:10. This makes the route a bit of a disaster for day trippers and business travellers. I also note WW has no late EDI-EMA for the summer (last departure ex EDI is 17:25) so pretty much the same as DUB for EDI too. No wonder a sizeable proportion of the regular EMA customer base has gone to BHX.

WW are slowly destroying EMA as base, which goes to prove that the concept was never entirely viable there anyway and was more of a synical BMI knee jerk reaction to Easy entering the market - well, its proving to be a bad move because if WW really made money at EMA, they wouldn't cut back so agressively or mis-time services badly. In the not too distant future, and thank goodness, WW EMA ops will be confined to the bucket-and-spade brigade routes, and hopefully we'll get real airline service back (BMI Regional with Jungle Jets would be fine) to operate the regular workaday routes like AMS, BFS, CDG, DUB, EDI, GLA.

"These new bmibaby services will provide no competitive threat whatsoever to bmi's London Heathrow operations"

Well they would have done a few years ago, when the then British Midland operated twice daily to PRG from LHR. Just goes further to show how fickle the organisation can be when it comes to selecting and making destinations work.

Andy

[Tom the Tenor]

The timing of the Gatwick flight ex Cork is critical to the route's success. There must be enough time for some amount of connectivity for Cork pax arriving at LGW who intend travelling further afield. Out of curiousity what kind of evening departures are there out of Gatwick after 4 pm to Afrcan destinations?

Also, why are there 2 daily winter schedule flights from Manchester to Cork on bmi baby and for the coming much busier summer season there is just the one flight and bearing in mind that BA are cutting their current 3 daily flights to just one for the summer too, it seems crazy - 5 daily winter flights ex MAN to Cork and for the summer just 2 flights!! From an excess of capacity in winter time to under capacity for the summer! Mad or what? Imagine what the fares are going to be like?

[runawayedge]

My guess is BA are hurting badly on yield ex Cork, and Baby are looking for better utilisation

[Caslance]

The PRG-LGW-PRG is a W on the Nottingham based aircraft. How on earth do they manage to get a 737 in and out of Tollerton? :ooh:

[KAT TOO]

I hear that baby are looking at W patterns through Leeds with Jersey and Cork set to be first freeing up Embraer/Fokker for CPH & FRA

[MD11FAN]

Eastmids,

Your quote "hopefully we'll get real airline service back (BMI Regional with Jungle Jets would be fine) to operate the regular workaday routes like AMS, BFS, CDG, DUB, EDI, GLA." is interesting. When the EMA-BRU route was operated by BMIbaby, average midweek fares were @ £50 o/w. Now the service has returned to BMI regional, my company has been paying as much as £225 o/w!!! Also you get to fly on a ERJ rather than a 737. I know which service I prefer.

Caslance,

EMA has been renamed Nottingham-East Midlands hence the reference to Nottingham.(Yes it is confusing)

Regards

Matt

[KAT TOO]

Yep

Regional charge more but its the only bit making any money just now or loosing the least.

[EastMids]

MD11FAN: "When the EMA-BRU route was operated by BMIbaby, average midweek fares were @ £50 o/w. Now the service has returned to BMI regional, my company has been paying as much as £225 o/w!!!"

My experiences as a regular traveller who would like to use Nottingham [East Midlands] is that other airlines operating from BHX are often cheaper than Baby if booked last minute, and of course offer substantially better facilities for that lower price - travelling to Paris last week, as a typical example, BHX-CDG-BHX was somewhat cheaper with Air France than EMA-CDG-EMA with Baby. Added to which the lower priced car parking at BHX for a two or three day stay more than pays for the 40 additional miles road journey each way. I also see quite a number of Baby fares (with the exception of some special offers), booked well advance, are no cheaper than BMI offered previously despite BMI including some semblance of inflight service included in the fare, which Baby obviously does not. Baby have been good at offering some cheap fares, sometimes, but has done little IMHO to help the regular traveller. I look forward to the day when Baby's gone from the regular routes, and we have [perhaps] BMI Regional in competing on a level playing field with operators out of BHX.

Andy

[MarkD]

Nice to see Gatwick back - I was looking at MAN to link up with Air Transat to YYZ for a cheap 1 way, pity LGW isn't till 30/4 as is too late for me...

[ALLMCC]

BMI Baby closes LGW base after only 9 months of operations


http://nowaviation.com/content/view/159

[gayrugbybloke]

Not so good news, perhaps Baby isn;t doing quite as well as the management would have us believe they are...axeing MAN to BCN, BOD, CDG and MJV has had a real effect on the lo-co ops out of MAN, and they 'claim' they can get more profit from the routes ex BHX, but we will see........

[Tom the Tenor]

I can only talk about what I know. baby are making money hand over fist at Cork. How bad!? as they'd say in Cork!

[BDWW]

I would like to express my disappointment in baby for axing its LGW "base". Baby really missed its chance to operate a couple of niche markets out of LGW, if baby had gone twice daily to ORK it really might have been able to give EZY a run for its money. I'm sure NOC would have been a profitable market for baby also.

I do wonder however what possessed baby management to think they could really make a real go of it at LGW if they couldn't get the slots though? Well it all adds to the "failed destinations" bin at baby HQ. what next i wonder??

With BHX opening in January, i do wonder how much cannibalistion it will cause to EMA? I have heard that EMA will go down to 5 based a/c next summer. Some routes at BHX will work like AMS & PRG as theres no other loco competition but i do wonder how they can expect to compete with BA & BE on the domestic routes?

[acbus1]

Its Official .....

AR Says so ..
"
bmibaby will be launching daily services from London Gatwick to Prague and Cork from the 30th April.............


Tony Davis, managing director of bmibaby, said:

"After only a few hours, customers are already seeing the benefits of new low-cost airline competition at Gatwick. We're delighted to be the cause of these benefits - and we look forward to delivering real competition to easyJet at the airport."
Are they both going to issue another statement each explaining the pullout.......are they........hmmm?

Thought not. :rolleyes:


I've rarely seen such uncoordinated, haphazard, ill thought out, crisis management style policies.........

.........except in the parent company! :}