[Closed] FLY BMI, gone bust All Flights Cancelled

Bummer. That's going to cause problems for business travellers in the UK.

Brexit bonus!

Missus used to work for them and still has plenty of friends that are cabin crew.

Airlines run on slim margins these days, if your costs have increased due to currency shifts and your revenues are down there was only every going to be one outcome. I'm sure the gammons will put the blame on the EU for excluding them from the Emissions Trading Scheme...

Got to confess never heard of them. Do they only operate out of the Midlands?

One less use for blue passports

Brexit bonus!

It is all absolute ****ing madness.

Mmmm cos it's not like any airline ever went bust before the referendum!

Change the ****ing record.

Wouldn't put everything on Brexit though - you have some idiots in charge of some companies as well.

I used to have some shares in another airline, Flybe. The board turned down an offer of around 45p a share in March 2018. Six months later the company was on its knees and they are now recommending shareholders accept 1p a share from Branson. Some people in charge are totally inept.

Balls. Booked to fly Bristol to Munich on Monday.
Booked with Lufthansa (Code share with BMI) have now swapped at no cost to fly from HR to Munich... Anyone going M4 Bristol to London on Monday morning??

Mmmm cos it’s not like any airline ever went bust before the referendum!

Change the **** record.

Yeah they cite rising costs and brexit uncertainty, probably seen a drop off in bookings due to people not spending money.

Mmmm cos it’s not like any airline ever went bust before the referendum!

Change the **** record.

read BMI's press release.

“Current trading and future prospects have also been seriously affected by the uncertainty created by the Brexit process, which has led to our inability to secure valuable flying contracts in Europe and lack of confidence around bmi’s ability to continue flying between destinations in Europe. Additionally, our situation mirrors wider difficulties in the regional airline industry which have been well documented.

Read more: https://www.thetravelmagazine.net/fly-bmi-in-administration.html#ixzz5fjI0V3Pk
Follow us: @TravelMagazine on Twitter | TheTravelMagazine on Facebook

Looks like that travelmagazine website linked there ^^ has been well and truly done over by hackers too. No clicky please...

I thought they’re been subsumed by IAG years ago?

So sorry for the staff. Seemed like a nice airline the few times I’ve flown with them.

Suspect they won’t be the last this year.

British Midland International (BMI) were taken over by IAG, and became part of BA. But BMI Regional was sold off as a separate airline, then rebranded as Fly BMI.

Bugger, that was how we normally get to Munich. It was a noisy little Embraer 145 that was often pretty empty.

I guess this means I will now have to spend a few hours at work on Monday figuring out how to transport the group I'm supposed to be flying with to Newcastle next month. What fun!

read BMI’s press release.

From what I've read their seat occupancy was terrible though, averaging something like 40%. Easy jet closer to 95%.

Wouldn’t put everything on Brexit though – you have some idiots in charge of some companies as well.

I think every company who goes down soon will be having a Brexit excuse in there, even if their business model has been failing for the last couple of years. Maybe Sick! could try that.

Really sad day, Bmi Regional (which is the the real name of the airline that has gone bust) was my first airline job and I had many happy years there based in Aberdeenshire.

Brexit bonus

I can tell you from the horses mouth that blaming this on Brexit is b*****t of the highest order. The airline was doomed when it was sold off to Lufthansa then in turn sold to a bunch of cowboys. It made money before that but has steadily lost money ever since. Poor business model, niche market and useless aircraft type are to blame not Brexit.

Best wishes to all my ex colleagues

read BMI’s press release.

Ha! believe that do you? You don't think its excuses from a failed executive leadership team who are all out looking for jobs again and making pathetic excuses to cover up their eneptness? Nothing to do with over capacity in an over crowded industry...not being able to fill aircraft with passengers? Nothing to do with rising fuel costs which all airlines are massively exposed to as fuel costs make up about 70% of an airlines cost base? It can't be something as simple as the usual reasons why airlines go bust....all the time - Monarch went bst not so long ago...unfortuantely for them it was too long ago for them to be able to blame Brexit, but if they had hung on for a bit longer I'm sure they would have blamed Brexit too, even though Brexit hasn't actually happened yet and nothing material has actually changed!!! Pathetic excuses.

Quite simple in many ways if you're an airline...you need decent routes that people want to fly at times they want to fly them - BMI didn't. Have competitive ticket pricing that they can actually make money from - BMI didn't. Sell enough of those tickets to make some profit - BMI couldn't. Fly from an airport passengers actually want to fly from - I love flying out of East Midlands as its local to me, but for people who don't live near it, it's not a great airport to fly out of, especially if they can fly out of Birmingham or Manchester - both within an hours drive apart from eachother, where you get a greater array of choices of airlines to fly, times to fly and destinations to fly to and airline networks to link into. People will tend to take those options, so on top of everything else BMI were based at an unattractive airport which didn't help ticket sales. So not much going for the airline really....but of course despite all that it's is the fault of Brexit!! Yeah, pull the other one.

I feel for those who work for the company though. Most will find alternative jobs I'm sure, but its not a nice thing to have to go through.

Brexit hasn’t actually happened yet and nothing material has actually changed!!!

Apart from the value of the pound, and consumers worried about spending money in uncertain times.

The pound to euro rate has been pretty much constant for two years. Apart from a crazy spike in 2015 , is much the same as 10 years.

Any company folding will blame Brexit, truth or not.

It's amazing the knots brexiters will tie themselves up in to try & deny that it's having a detrimental effect.

I know for sure that the UKs unknown future position on data retention is excluding UK researchers from pan-EU drug trials at the moment, which is an entirely self inflicted consequence of brexit.

Those weasely executives didn't say that Brexit was the only factor & it seems perfectly reasonable that a business that needs to plan months in advance for its access to the destinations it flys to should run into trouble when no one knows what that access will look like in just a few weeks. Coupled with UK's apparent exclusion from an EU carbon trading scheme I have no idea about tbf- another unintended consequence!

The magic wand of 'project fear' enabled Leave voters to dismiss any possible negatives before Brexit. Taking responsibility for the negative consequences after the vote, still causing them problems it seems.

As Andrew Marr said in the intro to today's show... the deadline in a few weeks is just the political b****cksing about in parliament... for those of us working, trading, exporting, importing... the deadline for planning for the future passed a long time ago (for some as long ago as just after the referendum!)

Yes we haven't left yet, legally. No, we still cannot plan properly. 2 frickin' years and we still don't know what we are planning for. So it's just expenditure to cover all bases and cover yer arse.

Brexshit is not the only reason, but is just the final nail in the coffin.  There will be many more coffins nailed. Some have already packed up and nailed it themselves and brexshit is 100% the last reason.

Companies house is gonna be busy. If you've "had your job stolen", I'm sure they'll be desperate for staff in the short term.

100% on BMI side wrt that statement. Sad to see another airline go. They won't be alone though.  edit: and sympathies to those (remainer) customers that are going to lose money and have holidays affected. Hope they can get refunds by some means or other.

It’s amazing the knots brexiters will tie themselves up in to try & deny that it’s having a detrimental effect.

I think they are still working at the whiteboard of stuff we are proud to be killing off and stuff that was nothing to do with us.

Anyone using the Brexit hasn't happened yet line is off to a losing start, the pound/euro level is about where it was post GFC/Recovery and still below the levels we had recovered to before Brexit. It's certainly not at a good rate for buying in the raw materials we need for a lot of things
Investment stalled

Growth taling off

Of course this has nothing to do with how BMI was managed BUT the changing economic climate will expose the worst first, the real question is how far will it go.

The economic crisis will happen anyway regardless, people are living and spending way beyond their means , and inflation has insured that nobody has got a pay rise in years to cope with the increasing costs. Nobody except the elite is saving and investing and choosing rather to spend it to get by at one scale ot to keep up with the jones on the other end. Brexit may have played a part or was good to use as a scapegoat, but quite frankly years of incompetent government and ruthless thrashing about of the public purse is what has caused this downturn.

That's Loganair taking over the Aberdeen flights. Hope they've looked into it enough and don't suffer any knock-on impact.

100% on BMI side wrt that statement

You shouldn’t be, it’s total bollox. There is simply no real viable use for an Embraer 145 in the current market, that’s why they did so many ad hoc charters trying to make ends meet by saying yes to everything. They were loosing money hand over fist 5 years ago when I left long before Brexit was even a word. Low payloads leading to low yield (by the way full aeroplanes is not always a good indicator of profit). In my last few months there we often departed with just a few passengers or even empty. The simple truth is the E145 is not the tool for short hops around the U.K. and Europe.

That’s Loganair taking over the Aberdeen flights. Hope they’ve looked into it enough and don’t suffer any knock-on impact

I should imagine they have considering the same people own Loganair that owned Bmi Regional. They have already offered jobs to Aberdeen based crew starting immediately on the exact same contract. That’s brilliant news for my friends up there but I do worry that they will have the exact same problem with using a 48 seat jet which sadly was only a great idea in the mid 90’s.

Brexit hasn’t actually happened yet and nothing material has actually changed!!!

Do you book all your flights with less than 40 days to go? Do you think that airlines might be having to plan their operations over a period of more than one month?

The pound to euro rate has been pretty much constant for two years. Apart from a crazy spike in 2015 , is much the same as 10 years.

Yes it's on the floor and due to plummet again. Prior to the referendum it was around 1.25 to 1.40 to the pound depending on how the city barrow boys were feeling for several years.

if there was a well managed brexit with a defined timeline and clarity allowing them to plan ahead two years in advance then I would agree it's not brexits' fault.

however, the unplanned hyperbole ridden shitshow that is run by idiots, fantasists and deluded irrelevant idiots that it is? yes it can be blamed.

Pound to euro static for ten year, gammon nonsense

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The simple truth is the E145 is not the tool for short hops around the U.K. and Europe.

Honest question - why does the type of small plane matter in this case?

Just had to rebook next week's flights to Japan because of this, unknown to us BMI were responsible for the first hop and meant second part would be invalid. Booked through expedia who thankfully covered the 400£ extra charges for different last minute flights.

Honest question – why does the type of small plane matter in this case?

Because you can fly a Dash 8 Q400 turboprop at almost the same speed, with more passengers for much less money or a 737/A320 with far more passengers more quickly for much cheaper seats.

The E145 was designed in the 90’s to feed commuters into large airports and charge business passenger prices. Now companies prefer to stick their staff on Easyjet or Flybe for half the cost.

Bang on Duir. What’s worse is that the E145 hardly achieves its optimum flight/cruising level before its descending again-either as a result of short hops or ATC level restrictions-Aberdeen to Norwich being a perfect example. That increases the inefficiency of the flight where the DH8D will be up at 230/250 cruising economically for half an hour or so, while the E145 burns through its fuel.

At one point 145s were everywhere, and then virtually overnight, they weren’t. Really rapid demise.

pound to euro static for ten year, gammon nonsense

Except 2016 wasn't 10 years ago. If you had read my comment you would have seen I mentioned the spike in 2015. Apart from the spike it's only been a few pence either side since 2009.

Caught the tail end of a news report on the radio earlier. I'm not 100% certain, but it sounded like they've just been bailed out by Virgin.

It looks like FlyBE has been sold to Virgin
https://news.sky.com/story/flybe-completes-cut-price-sale-to-virgin-after-turbulent-ride-11644517