BMIbaby shrinking

[Roland Perry]

(There must be a throwing out the BMIBaby with the bathwater joke in
here somewhere).

Anyway...

Despite recently announcing [1] that they were increasing the number of
routes from EMA, to pick up some ex-Easyjet business, it seems that
BMIBaby is cutting its aircraft from 17 to 12. But the airports affected
are Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff.

If three extra aircraft is a 40% increase, that means they must have
seven at the moment, and planned to have ten. Does this latest change
leave them with only two aircraft for all their other bases put
together?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8342207.stm

[1] http://www.bmibaby.com/bmibaby/en/index.aspx?p=43&cf=news&ID=444

"Three additional aircraft to be based at East Midlands Airport

"Eight new European routes from the airport to: Alghero (Sardinia),
Barcelona, Bastia (Corsica), Cork, Dubrovnik (Croatia), Malta, Newquay
and Venice

"Increased frequencies on key winter and summer routes, with the
addition of Palma to the winter flying programme, and a year round
service to Geneva and Prague

"As a result of the new routes and additional frequencies, the airlines’
capacity will increase by 40 per cent from East Midlands Airport.
bmibaby’s expansion plan will mean that an additional 350,000
passengers will fly with the airline from East Midlands Airport in 2010,
and an additional 2,872 flights will be operated by the airline next
year from the airport. Flights will go on sale today (09 September,
2009) and are available to book at www.bmibaby.com. The news comes just
days after easyJet announced its departure from East Midlands Airport."
--
Roland Perry