Comments on: Lufthansa Starts Making Changes at bmi

By: kt74

kt74 — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:46:57 +0000

@ The Boarding Pass
Yes, thanks, I had worked out it was most likely to be slot sitting on a massive scale (followed by several last minute “cancellations for technical reasons” perhaps?). You’d think they could slot-sit to some of the places that we passengers want to fly to…

By: The Boarding Pass

The Boarding Pass — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:52:57 +0000

@ kt74: They are probably adding MAN flights to protect the slots

By: RL

RL — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 07:41:32 +0000

@ Ron: Oh, OK. I thought I'd missed some 'enhancements'

By: Ron

Ron — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:39:51 +0000

RL wrote:

What are the substantial changes to Diamond Club?

Let's see: electronic upgrade vouchers replacing paper ones; mileage upgrades (were not available up till now); household accounts; redesign of the cards. This is just off the top of my head -- there's probably more.

By: RL

RL — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:49:24 +0000

Ron wrote:

It’s interesting to note that these route and aircraft cuts come alongside substantial changes to the frequent flier program (Diamond Club).

What are the substantial changes to Diamond Club?

By: kt74

kt74 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:48:31 +0000

@Zack Rules
Eurostar is all very well for tourists who want to get from Central London to Central Paris (I notice you were travelling on Leisure Select, rather than at full fare). It was virtually bankrupt two years ago, and the owners were forced to sacrifice equity stakes to their creditors – even bmi and BA haven’t done *that* badly. As a service, it is not much use if you don’t live in Central London or want to get to somewhere outside of Central Paris. You’ll notice that AF has just increased its frequency from 7x to 9x between LHR-CDG. Eurostar has also been around for 15 years (albeit only at the current speed for the last 2) and cannot explain the disappearance of bmi services to AMS or anywhere else. It’s also only 2 hours by train to MAN, yet bmi have doubled frequencies on certain weekdays in December. Nope, can’t blame trains for irrational management behaviour at bmi…

By: Kim

Kim — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:28:17 +0000

Love the picture :)

By: Zack Rules, Albany, NY

Zack Rules, Albany, NY — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:02:46 +0000

@ CF:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1230972/Heathrow-sales-throw-bmi-lifeline.html
Here’s a better story than that other one. Essentially, SWISS bought 6 slots from bmi for 60m pounds. bmi is even operating one of the flights for SWISS.

kt74
The Paris and Brussels flights formerly offered by bmi were eaten away by the Eurostar service via the Chunnel. It’s little wonder as I took the Eurostar the past summer from London to Paris in Leisure Select class. I arrived at St Pancreas with 30 minutes to spare, going through security quickly and was also pre-screened by the French. I was served an excellent salmon dinner with a nice glass of wine. Hotel to hotel took a little over three hours. Airlines can’t compete with this on shorthaul flights.

By: kt74

kt74 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:39:07 +0000

The latest announcement isn’t even the half of it – it’s a culmination of a gradual ramp down in bmi service over the last year or so, a sort of “death by a thousand cuts”, that has seen a gradual withdrawal from a number of UK and international business trunk routes ex-LHR. The pattern to date has been:

(1) significantly reduce frequencies (e.g. AMS used to be 8-9 flights a day, now cut to 4; LBA went from 5 to 2, etc) or downgrade aircraft (e.g. BRU went from 6x 319s to 4x ERJs)

Followed by (2), surprise, surprise, cancel route, claiming lack of demand

Then (3) LH miraculous finds convenient slots to launch 6x daily LHR-MXP or 3x daily LHR-TXL or 6x daily LHR-GVA or whatever – the same type of slots that cost CO over $50m per pair last year

Oh, and there’s also plenty of slot-sitting going on too – some days there are 10-11 scheduled flights to MAN, with 2-3 leaving within an hour of each other – not much better than the ghost flights bmi was accused of in the past (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7509732.stm)

Meanwhile, all the routes I used to deliberately choose bmi as a loyal, goldcard-carrying bmi traveller based in London are going or gone – AMS, BRU, CDG, MAD, LBA, JER to name but 6

Very sad indeed, and the history of European acquisitions of full service UK airlines with London hubs does not bode well for bmi… (c.f. Air UK -> klm uk -> buzz -> Ryanair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirUK)

By: CF

CF — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:38:38 +0000

Zack Rules, Albany, NY wrote:

There is where those slots are going, expanding service for LH carriers like SWISS and Lufthansa Italia.
http://www.airportbusiness.com/online/article.jsp?siteSection=1&id=32608
Also, the 757 was leased in May of 2008 for a two year period so that will expire in May of 2010.
While LH doesn’t appear to be interested in London-USA flying, they should at least add some flights in the future to some of the Star Alliance hubs that lack a London connection like Charlotte, Denver [at least during this winter] and Phoenix. Boston would be a good market as there’s no dominate carrier and Jetblue could provide some feed.

That link isn’t working for me – is there anything there beyond what you’ve already said? Thanks for forwarding the info.

I would be surprised if Lufthansa did anything from London to the US. There are reasons that those markets don’t have London flights – Lufthansa isn’t adding connectivity in London over what bmi had, so I imagine these just won’t work. Heck, they can’t even make PHX work from Frankfurt!