Bmibaby to be grounded
Bmibaby will be grounded from September, with some routes being stopped as early as next month, new owner IAG announced this afternoon.
The move by British Airways’ parent will affect almost 500 staff.
IAG said it was still willing to sell the East Midlands-based budget airline, but it said recently it didn’t expect to find a buyer for the carrier which is losing £25m a year.
IAG acquired bmibaby along with bmi from Lufthansa, but while bmi is being integrated into BA’s mainstream operations, BA has no desire to run the budget airline.
BA said it is more optimistic of being able to sell Aberdeen-based Regional, which it also acquired with bmi from Lufthansa.
"Bmibaby has delivered high levels of operational performance and customer service, but has continued to struggle financially, losing more than £100m in the last four years," bmi’s interim managing director Peter Simpson wrote in a letter to all staff.
"To help stem losses as quickly as possible, and as a preliminary measure, we will be making reductions to bmibaby’s flying programme from June. We sincerely apologise to all customers affected and will be providing full refunds and doing all we can with other airlines to mitigate the impact of these changes."
Services to Belfast and from East Midlands to Amsterdam, Paris, Geneva, Nice, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newquay, and from Birmingham to Knock and Amsterdam, will stop on June 11.
The airline is still selling summer flights from East Midlands and Birmingham, but there will be no further flights from September 20.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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