News: BmiBaby set to expand Birmingham flights
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Flights > News > # 966 (19/09/2006)
BmiBaby is expanding its route network at Birmingham International from next January.
The budget airline is going to base three more Boeing 737s at the Midland’s largest airport, taking their Birmingham fleet to eight aircraft.
As a result, Bmibaby is expected to announce several new destinations and an increase in frequency on some existing routes. The carrier’s managing director, Crawford Rix, said: “We will be introducing a number of exciting new destinations to compliment the thirteen European destinations that we currently serve from Birmingham.”
The first of the new aircraft will enter service in January, with the additional two planes arriving in time for the start of the summer season.
BmiBaby started operations at Birmingham in January 2005 and has since become the biggest carrier at the airport. The airline currently flies to Alicante, Amsterdam, Belfast International, Bordeaux, Cork, Edinburgh, Knock, Nice, Malaga, Palma and Prague from Birmingham.
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Comment:
This vague and hasty announcement seems to be a way for Bmibaby to provide some kind of reassurance about their future plans, following last week's drastic withdrawal from Durham Tees Valley. The airline has claimed that the aircraft which were previously based at Durham can be better utilised from their other bases, with the clear intention of making Birmingham their main focus.
When BmiBaby launched their Birmingham base, the vast majority of the airline's route network was covering destinations already served by other airlines based at Birmingham or nearby Coventry. Speaking to airline managers at the time, the strategy for launching new routes was expected to be about 'joining up the dots', rather than launching flights into untested markets which BmiBaby hadn’t previously exploited.
If BmiBaby are going to consolidate their position, and pull further ahead of Flybe, who already offer a much broader range of routes from Birmingham, they will have to make sure they choose their new destinations carefully. Their most recent announcement about operating flights to Aberdeen does not seem to be the most logical start, considering the type of aircraft they operate and the timings of their flights. We can presumably expect around five new additional routes from BmiBaby, some of which will be to airports the airline already serves from other bases.
Given the already stated intention to start flights to Aberdeen, we would not be surprised to see the no-frills airline start Birmingham to Glasgow flights, although they are always going to be disadvantaged by using larger aircraft than their rivals on this route. Inverness might be a more likely option, although we still think that this route would be far more suited to Flybe, who could maintain much higher frequencies by using their smaller aircraft for such services.
If any destination would seem like a dead cert, then it would be Paris, which BmiBaby currently serve from Nottingham East Midlands and Durham. Although Thomsonfly offer cheap flights to Paris Orly from Coventry, it has always been a notable omission from Birmingham's no-frills route map (we don’t count BA Connect as a genuine no-frills airline).
Most of the sunshine routes from Birmingham are already well served, but Barcelona is one notable gap. BmiBaby have operated flights to Barcelona before, so we're not sure if they want to return there - the city might be popular for numerous reasons, but it can often be difficult for airlines to secure the most advantageous slots there. Over the last few years, Birmingham has seen a huge cut in its range of flights to Italy, so we would hope to see a return of flights to Venice or Pisa for example. If BmiBaby were to start operating flights to Rome, that would be even more interesting.
We doubt BmiBaby would want to open up many flights to Germany, for fear of upsetting Lufthansa, who are major shareholders in the BMI group. Lufthansa already operate flights from Birmingham to Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich, but it would be good to see some competition for BA Connect on flights to Berlin. Recent attempts by Copenhagen airport to become more attractive to no-frills airlines, combined with the scrapping of Denmark's flights tax could make the Danish capital another possibility, especially as the market for weekend breaks to this fantastic city could be heavily stimulated by low cost fares.
Looking further east, Birmingham has numerous opportunities to offer flights to the new EU accession states. Prices on Sky Europe's flights to Krakow are often far too high for people to make impulse bookings, and the Eastern Europe specialists do not seem to have any further plans to expand their flights from Birmingham, especially as it is difficult for an airline to break into a new market with just one route. Perhaps BmiBaby will be daring, and will start competing on Krakow flights, or maybe they will try a route to somewhere up-and-coming like Gdansk. The Hungarian capital Budapest, which is often touted as a better value alternative to Prague, would almost certainly be the most logical option though.
