bmi diamond club - A chat with Nigel Turner

I had the pleasure of attending the inaugural ceremonies of Continental joining the Star Alliance earlier in the week.

All the CEOs of the 25 member airlines were there including our own Nigel Turner.

I managed to speak with him for a few minutes to guage a sense of the direction things are going with Bmi.

If you don't have time to hear it, in summary:

- Bmi are not seeing a recovery in terms of the economy

- Implementation with Lufthansa is going well and very supportive

- No plans to change cash & points redemption

- No plans to introduce bag charges at present but makes sense to do so

- No plans to bring back the routes to America or the regional UK airport

- Blames Heathrow operator BAA for the demise of regional flights


Otherwise you can hear the man speak:

Bmi.mp3 (http://www.4shared.com/file/144748885/280a0f12/Bmi.html)

why bring back the routes to america that were making money....?

I could use BD flights from LHR to IAD and MIA, my most travelled routes. Now have to suffer UA in Y...

The views and plans of Nigel Turner are relevant for about the next 30 days.

Thanks for sharing Johnny Rocket

Interesting points raised, the bag fee might not be that far off. DC to stay around for a while. And of course never a truer word spoken: "Never say never" when it comes to BD, anything is possible and from experience usually slightly dubious decisions :D

Presumably the bag fee will be waived for us goldies ;)

Gold or not, I don't see why anyone need pay a bag charge. I can bring my own from home.

What? :confused:

Couldn't help but chuckle over the bit about not seeing a recovery.

The old bmi management couldn't find a red bus in London....

Seriously though. They have smashed the backside out of all their commuter routes so just how are then going to spot anything as they have destroyed the confidence of the business travelling public by constantly changing and chopping domestic flights. BRU, DUB, GLA, EDI, MAN, LBA have all been a right royal cock up. My colleagues are as we speak switching to BA due to the withdrawal of the evening services to Scotland.

They must have done more on domestic to aid Willie Walsh and his London airways than he has ever managed to accomplish through their own advertising etc....

The return to the US for bmi through MAN was a dream that I think we all knew wouldn't happen for many years.

My colleagues are as we speak switching to BA due to the withdrawal of the evening services to Scotland.


Just when some on the BA forum are grabbing status matches and switching to bmi for LHR-EDI because of the temporary BA lounge closure at EDI.

bmi had the opportunity to be the commuter airline of choice for those in EDI, but with the frequency cutbacks then a lot of these pax will switch back to BA as soon as their lounge reopens.