British Budget Airline Bmibaby Shuts Down
Bmibaby Boeing 737 (photo: Wikipedia)
British budget carrier Bmibaby has shut down operations after the parent company International Airlines Group (IAG) could not find a buyer for the airline.
It’s final flight, Flight 5330 from Malaga to East Midlands, flew on September 9th.
The Telegraph reports:
‘Around 450 staff will be made redundant, although Monarch is taking over a number of Bmibaby’s routes, and hopes to create 150 jobs. Other routes are being taken over by Jet2.com and Flybe.
Following its launch, the airline became Britain’s third-largest low-cost carrier. At its height, it served destinations such as Prague, Alicante, Rome, Barcelona and Amsterdam from its headquarters at East Midlands airport in Leicestershire.
It was sold to German airline Lufthansa in 2008, but its decline continued, with services from Cardiff and Manchester terminated in 2011.’
The airline has lost over $160 million in the last 4 years, and was then sold to IAG, who planned its closure for awhile.
Category: Airnation
This is very sad.
Third largest low cost says it all, it was on a losing pathway when competing with that Irish mob and the Greek.
British Midland was in my unworthy opinion a quality airline in the regions outside of British Airways/ BOAC / BEA dominance at Heathrow during the period when it mattered.
At BHX/EMA they were something spotters bothered to get out of bed for, DC9′s, B707′s and the music of their engines.
For non UK readers, BMI baby is just part of the BMI that has been grabbed by IAG or British Airways and that BMI is soon to die.
B-CAL, DAN-AIR and others have fallen into the BA black hole.
Very sad indeed.