BMI cancels summer flights to Bordeaux

[Ron Avery]

From the BBC:

"Bmibaby is stopping its summer services to Rome, Milan, Lisbon, Madrid and  Bordeaux from Birmingham International from 29 March to 24 October.

[Cat]

Is this anything to do with the buyout of BMI by Lufthansa, do you think?

[Ron Avery]

Could be, I just hope they keep the "new" but actually restored route from Manchester to Toulouse scheduled for next summer, which is covered via Amsterdam by KLM.  When BMI baby stopped it last time they only gave a couple of weeks notice

[Pickles]

From pprune, quoting a management memo:

".... on the recommendation of bmibaby’s executive

team, we have decided that bmibaby’s capacity needs to be reduced next

year, in order to remove development routes that currently have

insufficient demand to justify their retention. We also need to reshape

the bmibaby network to create more operational efficiency, which will

also allow us to reduce management overhead in the Tiny Town head

office.

We had already planned significant winter

capacity reductions, but will now not replace three aircraft that have

either come or are coming to the end of their leases and will be

reducing the peak flying programme in 2009 to 17 aircraft. This will

unfortunately have an inevitable impact on the number of operational

jobs required and will require some reductions in the management

overhead structure. Today we are therefore commencing a 30 day

consultation with the relevant unions about the 70 full time

equivalent positions at risk, which are concentrated in the Birmingham

base and a few in East Midlands. We will as usual endeavour to minimise

compulsory job losses but are not in a position where we can carry

surplus jobs until the market recovers to such an extent that we feel

able to grow the business again"

Bit more detail but doesn't really say any more than the spokesperson did.

Regards

Pickles

[shropshirelass]

Well done Ron you are on the ball.  I just heard the article on the BBC Midlands news and went to post it but you're more efficient than me!  I'm not altogether surprised about this though as they actually cancelled quite a few flights on this route at the end of this summer season and having been taken over I thought something would go.  It's a great shame as it was the most convenient route for me from Shropshire to the Gers.  I actually flew with Ryanair for the first time ever last month from Birmingham to Biarritz and apart from an hour delay on the aircraft because they couldn't tally the number of people on board (a faulty clicker counter was to blame) they weren't too bad but it's just a bit too far away for us.  Let's hope that someone else will take on Birmingham - Bordeaux in time for next year. 

In the meantime there is no news of this on the BMI website and the timetable shows flights to Bordeaux for Summer 2009.  It's so nice of them to be so informative!