Number crunching

Flybmi operated 17 37- and 49-seat Embraer jets to 25 cities; simple maths points to its demise. Last year, it carried 522,000 passengers on 29,000 flights, an average of exactly 18 per flight. Even on its small aircraft, this would have been unsustainable.

Flybmi, formerly Bmi Regional, braved seven years as an independent brand. The carrier was owned by Airline Investments Ltd, formed in 2012 after IAG bought Bmi and folded it into British Airways without taking on Bmi Regional.

Airline Investments pumped

£40 million into the business, but has decided instead to now concentrate on its other business, Loganair, acquired in 2015.

Airline Investments’ 2017 figures (the 2018 results are flagged as overdue on Companies House) show Loganair with a £3 million profit, but Flybmi losing £5.8 million.

Intelligence firm OAG’s director John Grant said any airline that reached outside its core market and had low frequency “scattergun networks” would struggle.

“The space for regional carriers is becoming increasingly difficult, especially for those that have no significant presence and connecting traffic at a major hub airport,” he said.

“Operating a series of small bases in UK provincial markets when corporate confidence is low, fuel costs are increasing and APD is a constant deterrent makes for a challenging set of conditions.”

John Strickland, of JLS Consulting, added: “Flybmi had managed to negotiate some lucrative corporate contracts but Brexit placed uncertainty on the continuity of these, and it was not in the strong financial position of many larger airlines to invest in obtaining additional licences.”

Picking up the slack

Almost as soon as Flybmi’s demise was announced, a rescheduling of some Flybmi services under the Loganair brand was confirmed.

Loganair will take over routes from Aberdeen to Bristol, Oslo and Esbjerg from March 4, plus Newcastle to Brussels and Stavanger from March 25. However, despite the two brands having common ownership, Loganair will not honour original Flybmi bookings.

One small comfort is anyone booked on Flybmi flights on Loganair ticketing or via Loganair’s website should be able to travel on the new Aberdeen services from March 4, but this will be no consolation to those left stranded last weekend at Europe’s airports or booked to travel before the new services start.

West Country passengers are most affected, as Bristol airport has lost routes to Brussels, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Munich and Paris. Paris is an easyJet route and it has offered to help stranded passengers there. There were also solitary East Midlands-Brussels and Derry-Stansted services, with Derry being a government-supported route. This may make it attractive to a new entrant, as funding until 2021 has just been approved, but Derry airport has said its future will be “challenging” without a London connection.

Flybmi did, until 2017, run charter flights for Inghams, Sunvil and Serenity Holidays, but this coming weekend, only a few Premier League club charters are likely to be affected.

Flybmi’s collapse means a dwindling number of UK airlines for operators and football clubs to buy seats from. It also confirms that unless you have a rich parent brand and have reached critical mass, then 2019 could be a turbulent year.