News: BmiBaby scrap Durham Tees Valley flights
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Flights > News > # 967 (18/09/2006)
BmiBaby are pulling out of Durham Tees Valley airport this winter. The budget airline have not revealed the reason for their decision, but as a result all flights between Durham and Cork, Paris Charles de Gaulle and London Gatwick will be cancelled from October 29. The final flights between Durham and Alicante, Malaga and Palma will take off on November 6.
Customers affected by these cancellations are entitled to a full refund, although the airline has said it will not be responsible for any additional charges incurred. Passengers are advised to pursue any claims for additional expenses via their own personal travel insurers.
A statement released by Durham Tees Valley airport said the Spanish routes in particular had been extremely successful, and described Bmibaby’s decision as “inexplicable”.
The statement also said: “It was only in April 2006 that BmiBaby doubled its capacity out of Durham Tees Valley Airport with the introduction of a second based aircraft to meet passenger demand. Following record passenger numbers in August they have decided to withdraw the base operation. This makes the decision all the more confusing.”
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Comment:
This seems like a very rash development from BmiBaby, who are trying to focus more on their existing bases, particularly Birmingham International airport. Although airports do not like to discuss the individual deals they make with airlines, industry sources suggest that Birmingham airport management have made a particularly attractive offer to BmiBaby, after the airport had a very slow summer.
It would be easy for us to say that the Tees Valley's loss is the Midlands' gain, but this doesn't hide the fact that BmiBaby have left many of their passengers stranded. Even if they can expect a full refund on what they have paid for their flights, the airline is under no obligation to offer any kind of compensation for hotel and car hire bookings which might have already been made, and passengers are now left in further limbo because it is difficult to know how long it will take before a replacement airline is found.
This move could be seen as an attempt by the Baby to show that it wants to grow up, but pulling completely out of a base airport, when so many tickets have already been sold, is much more reminiscent of the kind of spoilt brat like behaviour we usually associate with Ryanair. Of course, what goes around comes around - Ryanair pulled a similar stunt in Birmingham in April 2004, but moved most of its operations to Nottingham East Midlands, rather than pulling out of the area completely.
As no frills airlines go, BmiBaby like to place themselves at the top end of the market, pointing out how they have won the best low-cost airline award from readers of the Daily Telegraph for the last three years. Compared to Easyjet and Ryanair, they certainly offer a more pleasant on-board experience, with a service which includes allocated seats, and free flights for all children under two-years-old.
Industry analysts have often suspected that BmiBaby was set-up as an urgent response to low-cost airlines operating under the noses of BMI's Castle Donington headquarters, which are near Nottingham East Midlands airport. Having grown to a fleet of 19 aircraft, with other bases in Manchester and Cardiff, the four-year-old airline is under intense internal pressure to provide a reasonable return on the huge investment which has gone into it. It seems managers believe that large city airports such as Birmingham and Manchester are the most likely places to generate future profits. These airports might not appear to have the low-cost appeal of Durham Tees Valley, but they provide access to a much wider population than is available in the northeast, where competition is already intense, albeit at nearby Newcastle airport.
We will wait and see how the strategy pays off - there are certainly plenty of destinations which have disappeared from Birmingham's route map in recent years, or which have simply never been on there in the first place, and BmiBaby will be in a position to fill some of these gaps. Whereas many other regional airports in the UK have similar types of airlines competing against each other (e.g. Easyjet and Jet2 at Newcastle, or Easyjet and Ryanair at Liverpool), the competition at Birmingham tends to be focused on certain niche areas - e.g. Spain and Portugal (Monarch Scheduled), France and high-volume UK domestic routes (Flybe), or traditional business destinations (BA Connect). Having retreated from the north, we are certainly expecting the Baby to put up a very strong fight here in the Midlands.
