bmi British Midland, the second-largest airline operating at London Heathrow airport, is eliminating an important part of its UK domestic network and is cutting capacity to continental Europe amid rising losses.
bmi will announce on friday it is axing two of its mainline services between Heathrow and Leeds Bradford and Durham Tees Valley – a total of seven daily departures – in addition to the previously announced closure of the twice-daily service between Heathrow and Jersey.
It will also be reducing the number of daily services between Heathrow and Dublin from seven to six, and between Heathrow and Amsterdam from seven to four. Capacity is being cut on the Heathrow to Aberdeen and Brussels routes by using small regional jets in place of the existing larger Airbus aircraft.
Heavy pressure to staunch losses is coming from Germany’s Lufthansa, which is due to complete its takeover of a majority 80 per cent stake in the UK carrier next month. Some BMI jets are to be leased out to Lufthansa.
The worsening of the problems facing BMI was disclosed two weeks, when the group decided to renege on a three-year pay deal and implemented a pay freeze at short notice for 2009, the third year of the deal.
The increase was paid by some banks into pilots’ accounts only to be withdrawn hours later, triggering the calling of a no-confidence ballot by pilots in Nigel Turner, BMI chief executive.
Mr Turner has previously disclosed the airline suffered the biggest loss in its history in 2008. He is expected to tell the 5,000 staff trading conditions have deteriorated further in recent weeks.
The group is being hit by a sharp reduction in both business and leisure traffic, and is being forced to take action to eliminate lossmaking routes and cut capacity.
BMI is removing about four aircraft or 12 per cent of its mainline short-haul fleet of 32 Airbus A320 family jets, which are to be used in charter rather than scheduled service. Two of the Airbus fleet are to be leased to Lufthansa together with BMI pilots and cabin crew, and will be operated on the German airline’s planned new route between Milan Malpensa and Heathrow, and Berlin and Heathrow.
Defiantly not good at all - and it seems the regions are taking the hit quite seriously this time - and once those services are gone, they'll be nigh on impossible to get back.
The cut from Airbus's to ERJ's is a worrying cut of capacity, but it does keep the service at least - that's one thing I suppose.
The news of the wet lease is of minor joy, but BMI is hurting bad at the moment
As a part time lurker on here (I get a lot of useful information!) and operating crew for bmi, I'm sorry to everyone that'll be affected. These routes have been bmi staples for a long time and if the article is true, it'll be a real shame to see them go. Perhaps it's time to remove the 'm' from bmi for fear of being done under the trade descriptions.
Given that I don't see any new bmi services except Kiev and the second TLV rotation, I presume LH Italia is using BD's domestic slots as well as its aircraft. This must have been discussed some time prior to the still-not-officially-happened sale. If Berlin and Milan are such promising routes and can be operated using BD slots and BD aircraft then how come BD aren't flying there as it is? I mean, what is the point of wetleasing from a -soon-to-be-wholly-owned subsidiary and deep codeshare partner?
Pretty much kills any hope that LH might expand the bmi brand at LHR
Seems strange that KLM recently announced an increased the size of the plane on the MME-AMS service whilst bmi have engaged in the death of a thousand cuts on the MME-LHR.
Is it any wonder they can't even fill a 145 when the first arrival at LHR is 10AM, the only service back if you have a full day arrives at 21:25 or that unless you book weeks in advance the only seats available are usually full Y.
So now I'm stuck with NXEC to London and LHR/LCY-FRA, Transpennine Express to Manchester and onwards with LH or Skyteam oh joy!
I guess the rumours of LBA-FRA were just rumours then?
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but JER/LBA/MME combined releases nine slot pairs? Add others available from DUB/AMS reduced service and thats thirteen pairs.
LH is starting Italia with six A319 (5 from Germanwings/1 from LH) to be based in Milan and they're now taking two A3?? from BD to part service the future, up to six daily MXP-LHR rotations........
and Berlin? where did that come from. I didn't know LH LHR-TXL was even on the cards, no rumour mentioned in the other forum that I noticed. It would have to be at least two/three rotations a day to make sense. A complete move away from LCY for the 3x daily service perhaps?
What next? A proper 'better for business' service to DUB perhaps? Oh hang on...
As for LBA and MME...I can imagine direct services (from FRA operated by LH, perhaps?) appear economically sensible now that the domestic services have been made all but useless by poor timing and poor connections. I'm not surprised KL is doing well on the back of bmi's falling out with MME.
...As for LBA and MME...I can imagine direct services (from FRA operated by LH, perhaps?) appear economically sensible now that the domestic services have been made all but useless by poor timing and poor connections. I'm not surprised KL is doing well on the back of bmi's falling out with MME.
I've dreamed of this, especially MME-FRA but I don't think that LH have any spare slots in FRA, if they do then LBA makes more sense LH already have 4* daily from MAN and I'm guessing more than a few passengers are coming via the M62.
I did read that at MME they are talking redundancies, so I doubt they expect the slots being immediately reassigned.
bmi axes LHR-LBA & MME, frequency cuts AMS & DUB, BRU & ABZ all-Embraers
