Hello,

A collegue of mine has sworn never to fly bmi again after a LHR > MAN flight a week last friday was apparently operated by Eastern Airways.

I think it was either the BD590 or the BD592 on Friday 06/02. Apparently, bmi described the flight as being "operated by their sister airline Eastern Airways".

He said the plane was "bloody awful" - very old and very cramped.

I hope this isn't going to turn into a repeat of the British European 737 mess!

Anyone else heard of this? I really hope it's a one off as the BD590 is my usual flight every week!

Richard

If your friend vows never to fly again on the basis of a single unsatisfactory incident, all I can say is that:
1) he does not/will not fly very often
2) he will run out of airlines rather quickly
3) he will have to eat his words.

the 592 last fri night was f-100

even though it smelt very strange, (stale sweaty socks)It was still BD.

Who are eastern airways, I noticed they have taken over some of the desks at the BD Checkin in Manchester

P

I think Eastern bought a lot of the old BA regional routes, together with the jetstream aircraft. They're a small (+ growing) regional carrier based at Humberside. I think that bmi are using them for the new MAN-Norwich route.

I can't see them operating MAN-LHR, unless the F-100 went tech and they provided a last minute replacement.

I'm afraid that Bmi have again been operating the MAN-LHR route with a European 737.

I arrived at MAN on the 6th and it was on the LHR stand around 12:30 ish....

Just FYI: http://www.easternairways.com/

I can honestly say that Eastern have never operated a LHR flight on behalf of bmi and are most definately not "sister airlines"!! Eastern operated nine flights a day to Stanstead , Inverness and Norwich and until recently were handled by bmi but are now handled by Groundstar. bmi now operate their own Manchester - Norwich service once a day with their own Embraer!

I've noticed a few LHR-MAN flights operated by ER4s, if this is closer to the mark.

The ER4 operates a few London sectors at the weekends while the Airbus is used for Charters!

I've flown Eastern a couple of times from LBA to Southampton on Jetstream 31s - they serve free champagne and chocolates!

The Stewardess had really bad B.O

3green That comment deserves an award!!!

pbsis:

I am afraid in taking hearsay from your colleague you have got a few facts wrong.

Eastern Airways, an independent carrier, were nothing to do with this operation. And British European (now trading as Flybe) were nothing to do with any �737 mess� in the past.

BD 590 on Friday 6 Feb was operated by BMI A321 G-MIDJ and BD 592 was operated by BMI A321 G-MIDM (standing in for a scheduled Fokker 100).

I think what you are describing is that BMI did subcharter in a European Aviation Boeing 737-200 G-CEAG on that day. This did four Heathrow round trips, BD 50 to Edinburgh early morning, then BD 586 and 598 to Manchester, and BD 62 to Edinburgh and back in the evening. It then positioned back to its base in Bournemouth at about midnight.

European Aviation is not a sister airline of BMI.

Given these little variances, can we put trust in the rest of the account ? And do you want to point out to your colleague that although he was telling you about travelling back to Manchester on a Friday evening flight, he was actually on the flight scheduled to leave Heathrow at 1505 in the afternoon (and which was on time). If he�d done a longer day he�d have been on a nice BMI A321 !!

I think we can believe that if it was the EAL 737-200 then the comments regarding the quality of the plane were accurate. As anyone who had the misfortune to travel this bucket of bolts last year will confirm!

Given the negative response from a large number of pax, you'd think bmi might have learned their lesson.

BC

Not quite certain what the lessons are to be learned here.

The options available to BMI are:

1. Have a spare Airbus in the fleet. They cost very roughly $100m each and it would more than consume any profit BMI have ever made in recent years. And it still doesn't fully help in a situation like last summer when two aircraft were out of action.

2. Cancel the flight. What some other airlines do. As there probably wasn't a lot of availability on other flights to Manchester on a Friday evening you'd be off to Euston for the train - and probably standing in it.

3. Charter in a "high quality" aircraft. Unfortunately these always don't exist, despite the "oh there must be a spare one" belief of uninformed observers. When you invest in such an asset you plan to use it. It's just like those who when trains are overcrowded say "oh, just add extra carriages" as if they miraculously are kept waiting for any eventuality.

4. Go to European (or Titan, or the few others who can handle such a request). They have, ready for immediate despatch, fully depreciated but perfectly serviceable aircraft, crewed and ready to go for anybody; BMI, Ryanair, the holiday charter companies, whoever. It's probably been sat for days at Bournemouth, unused, waiting for the phone call. Note how the European 737 was keeping nice time all day long on this programme, better than some of the BMI Airbuses, not really a sign of poor mechanical standards. Sure the cabin shows its 30 years. But in BMIs position it's the option to go for.

If you want to fly in a "Bucket of bolts" I'll take you up in my old Cessna. Perfectly serviceable. And you'll never complain about European ever again!