Bmibaby - Sustainable with two aircraft ?
 

Well i've been having a look at <a href="http://www.bmibaby.com/bmibaby/" target="_blank">http://www.bmibaby.com/bmibaby/</a> and the one thing that hits me is how sustainable is the timetable with just two aircraft ? One plane going tec would surely have pretty big implications for the rest of the timetable -- or would Mum or Dad be on hand with a spare 737 if something went wrong ? - after all what are parents for ?

Also given the "tourist" nature of the destinations bmibaby are flying to , I was surprised to see there is pretty much 0% utilisation between 0000 and 0700 - would have thought a few "red-eye" flights would have been operated. Charter work maybe ???

Would imagine parent bailing out would be on the cards, but could be load problems if over 100 pax.

Go started off with no night flying to protect the scheduled departures, but they soon switched into night IBZ's etc. With 2 aircraft there is a real risk of knock on delays but that's nothing new.

bmi may use 2 146 aircraft that are on group standby duty and currently based EMA.

Flown by whom?? bmir have only kept crews for 2 a/c on temporary(or is it becoming rather more permament) contracts and one of them is doing MAN/BRU.

A mate of mine was on with bmi regional at STN on the 146 - if they're getting another 146 back, does this mean he might be dragged of the redundancy pile and work again? Or can they crew these with those that are based at EMA?

electricblue

I would be very surprissed if any Tour Op would charter a BMI Baby acft. It would be like Virgin asking BA to operate a flight for them

Why would you be surprised? Over recent years, bmi has operated dedicated charter a/c (A321) for Air2000, even to the extent of painting 'operated of behalf of..' on the fuselage. It makes perfect sense for the IT operators to run their own fleets below max. projected numbers and sub. out the rest. Indeed, let's hope they book 'em again very soon.

As to bmibaby, despite the carping etc., here's wishing them the very best of success. It's not just good for them but for all of us. <img src="tongue.gif" border="0">