Great, seems I'll be on FlyBE then

[TeamD]

BMIbaby pulls out of Belfast City Airport

More fabulous news for those of us that have to get around on business. I really don't see why this makes any sense, I have been flying back and forth from East Midlands Airport regularly for over a year now and every baby flight that I've been on has been well populated. So now the only airline I can fly is FlyBE

[Puggit]

TeamD said:

BMIbaby pulls out of Belfast City Airport

More fabulous news for those of us that have to get around on business. I really don't see why this makes any sense, I have been flying back and forth from East Midlands Airport regularly for over a year now and every baby flight that I've been on has been well populated. So now the only airline I can fly is FlyBE

bmiBaby is closing down as a result of the BA takeover of bmi.

Rumours are that a buyer has been found for bmi Regional (which can only realistically be flyBE).

Sorry, but that's what is happening.

[Liszt]

I thought method of contraception had been advocated in Ireland for years

[TeamD]

Puggit said:

bmiBaby is closing down as a result of the BA takeover of bmi.

Rumours are that a buyer has been found for bmi Regional (which can only realistically be flyBE).

Sorry, but that's what is happening.

I do seriously have to wonder about the business acumen of those behind these sort of actions, I mean, they have a routes which are popular, their only competitor
is FlyBE who are more expensive and their solution to reducing losses is to quit running flights? There are other parameters within such a business that can be tweaked to produce a more effective result than just binning the airline.

[Puggit]

TeamD said:

Puggit said:

bmiBaby is closing down as a result of the BA takeover of bmi.

Rumours are that a buyer has been found for bmi Regional (which can only realistically be flyBE).

Sorry, but that's what is happening.

I do seriously have to wonder about the business acumen of those behind these sort of actions, I mean, they have a routes which are popular, their only competitor
is FlyBE who are more expensive and their solution to reducing losses is to quit running flights? There are other parameters within such a business that can be tweaked to produce a more effective result than just binning the airline.

bmiBaby as a whole entity lost £100m over 4 years - I guess it's just far easier for BA to say goodbye.

[sirtyro]

I find FlyBe to be a better airline then BMI Baby.

[Edinburger]

sirtyro said:

I find FlyBe to be a better airline then BMI Baby.

FlyBe (a.k.a. FlyMaybe) are consistently the worst airline I have ever flown on. I have the displeasure of using them once or twice a month and they are awful. Aircraft are okay but they're unreliable, expensive, crap website, awful customer service, etc., etc. Truly dismal state of affairs.

BMIBaby were okay, not as good as BMI obviously but they were a decent outfit.

[digger_R]

I'm just hoping someone picks up the Birmingham to Amsterdam connection - otherwise I'll be paying KLM prices from now on

[TeamD]

Ok, so let's try to follow the logic, IAG acquire BMI, but don't want the baggage of Baby and Regional. They try to sell those but were unable to. So then decide to shut them down. The question is here...why could they find no buyers for an established airline with acceptable passenger numbers and a brand image? Were they being greedy and asking too much? Surely selling baby for £1 would have the same effect? Or is it just a case of corporate vandalism?

[Puggit]

The Crack Fox said:

EasyJet pulled out of East Mids airport, now they're losing BMIBaby, I wonder if passengers are voting with their feet because EMA is such an over-priced hell-hole of a place ?

And Heathrow isn't?

[Munter]

TeamD said:

The question is here...why could they find no buyers for an established airline with acceptable passenger numbers and a brand image?

Because those were built on a high cost, low price model. Which was losing money hand over fist, and nobody wanted to take that on when they had their own services in the low price sector, but without the high running costs?

[TeamD]

The Crack Fox said:

Puggit said:

The Crack Fox said:

EasyJet pulled out of East Mids airport, now they're losing BMIBaby, I wonder if passengers are voting with their feet because EMA is such an over-priced hell-hole of a place ?

And Heathrow isn't?

Yeah, it is, but I don't often use it. East Midlands airport is the Ryanair of airports.

Living less than a mile from it makes selecting another airport somewhat of a non-starter. What is over-priced? I treat it like a bus station why is pretty much what it is!

[oyster]

TeamD said:

Ok, so let's try to follow the logic, IAG acquire BMI, but don't want the baggage of Baby and Regional. They try to sell those but were unable to. So then decide to shut them down. The question is here...why could they find no buyers for an established airline with acceptable passenger numbers and a brand image? Were they being greedy and asking too much? Surely selling baby for £1 would have the same effect? Or is it just a case of corporate vandalism?

But if the airline and routes were loss-making then why would they keep them running?

Even if the aircraft are fairly full it doesn't mean they're profitable as the whole plane could be on £20 fares. You've said yourself that they're cheaper than FlyBe - maybe too cheap for their own good.

[TeamD]

oyster said:

TeamD said:

Ok, so let's try to follow the logic, IAG acquire BMI, but don't want the baggage of Baby and Regional. They try to sell those but were unable to. So then decide to shut them down. The question is here...why could they find no buyers for an established airline with acceptable passenger numbers and a brand image? Were they being greedy and asking too much? Surely selling baby for £1 would have the same effect? Or is it just a case of corporate vandalism?

But if the airline and routes were loss-making then why would they keep them running?

Even if the aircraft are fairly full it doesn't mean they're profitable as the whole plane could be on £20 fares. You've said yourself that they're cheaper than FlyBe - maybe too cheap for their own good.

That may be, but that would be a management failing in not adjusting their fares to cover their overheads and potentially make a profit would it not? Let's put it this way, £100 million over 4 years, let's say £25 million a year then for arguments sake, having difficulty finding overall passenger figure for 2011 but Belfast City alone contributed over 400k passengers in 2011 and a combined passenger figure for BMI and baby in 2010 are quoted at about 6.9 million let's say only half of that was Baby at 3.45 million, divide 25 million by that and you get 7.25 so, increase fares by £7.25 for each passenger and break even, job's a good 'un

[TeamD]

The Crack Fox said:

TeamD said:

Living less than a mile from it makes selecting another airport somewhat of a non-starter. What is over-priced? I treat it like a bus station why is pretty much what it is!

Rant alert...

Everything at East Midlands airport is expensive. And st. If I make a daytrip to Glasgow, Aberdeen, or Amsterdam (which is most months), I pay c.£27 for c.12 hours parking. There's no undercover parking anywhere. The airport's own train station is nowhere near the airport and there's no bus from train station to airport. If someone drops you off they have to pay. Then there's the massive queues when the Benidorm brigade fly, and the security staff shortage is alleviated by them installing lots of machines so you can pay £3 to join a slightly shorter queue, and if you've forgotten a plastic bag for toiletries, they'll charge you for one, then you have to negotiate the leather-faced hags touting aftershave in the rammed tax-free shop to find the gates which are mostly obscured by concrete pillars and long queues of people Ryanair-ing back to Eastern Europe, the monitors tell you to 'relax and shop'.... then you'll either walk across a sleet-blown apron to reach the plane, or be crammed onto filthy ancient buses. On your return there is the usual crowd barrier slalon where you must walk 12 Km sideways to go 10m forwards. And more queues. You can write to them but they ignore you and/or lie. It's my local airport and I fly a lot but I really, really hate the place. Brum is 40 minutes away and much better in every respect.

On the plus side, I am very reliably infomed than a MK1 MX-5, not unlike the one in my profile, will fit under the exit barrier of the long stay parking at the end of Viscount road on the right backing onto the runway and that their cameras don't seem to send a fine to the owner depite repeated barrier limbo's.

Sorry, you did ask....

If you speak to me nicely I'll let you park on my drive

[TheSnitch]

TeamD said:

BMIbaby pulls out of Belfast City Airport

More fabulous news for those of us that have to get around on business. I really don't see why this makes any sense, I have been flying back and forth from East Midlands Airport regularly for over a year now and every baby flight that I've been on has been well populated. So now the only airline I can fly is FlyBE

Not sure what's going on with Flybe either. I make the journey from Newcastle to Belfast regularly, and they have now reduced the number of flights, so that there is only one flight in each direction on a Thursday and Friday. Considering I normally go there and back on the same day, I guess I won't be using Flybe any more......

[TeamD]

TheSnitch said:

TeamD said:

BMIbaby pulls out of Belfast City Airport

More fabulous news for those of us that have to get around on business. I really don't see why this makes any sense, I have been flying back and forth from East Midlands Airport regularly for over a year now and every baby flight that I've been on has been well populated. So now the only airline I can fly is FlyBE

Not sure what's going on with Flybe either. I make the journey from Newcastle to Belfast regularly, and they have now reduced the number of flights, so that there is only one flight in each direction on a Thursday and Friday. Considering I normally go there and back on the same day, I guess I won't be using Flybe any more......

Strange you should mention that, I was looking at flights from EMA to Belfast City and though to myself, "I'm sure there were more FlyBE flights a day than that"

[CAPP0]

Only last week the BA website was trumpeting the "benefits" which would come from the merger/acquisition.

[Puggit]

CAPP0 said:

Only last week the BA website was trumpeting the "benefits" which would come from the merger/acquisition.

As someone who used to fly bmi frequently but stopped when they became a useless business airline within Europe and so switched to infrequent flights on BA - I'm very happy. My 200k bmi miles will be moved to BA and allow myself to upgrade occasionally

[HeatonNorris]

TheSnitch said:

Not sure what's going on with Flybe either. I make the journey from Newcastle to Belfast regularly, and they have now reduced the number of flights, so that there is only one flight in each direction on a Thursday and Friday. Considering I normally go there and back on the same day, I guess I won't be using Flybe any more......

And they've re-aligned their price structure - so a pair of tickets which cost me just over £300 last year now comes in at £430.