The Times of London reports that BMI and United have applied for U.S. government permission to merge their trans-Atlantic operations. The paper cites BMI CEO Nigel Turner as its source. The airlines would continue to be separately owned, but passengers would deal with only one of the two when booking flights.
United and BMI to Merge Trans-Atlantic Ops
- Thread starter FA Mikey
- Start date
BMI will probably cancel its Manchester flights and move the 3 A330 to LHR. Since UA sold its JFK authority to Delta and JFK is the biggest destination from the UK to the USA this would be a good place to start. IAD and ORD are heavily serviced by UA & BA. AA is huge to ORD but at JFK BMI would have a better chance to capture some market share.
BuffaloJoe
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BMI I believe currently flies to ORD from MAN? Why fly into JFK. There is money that can be made other places such as DEN and IAD on the UA side and PHL on US side. JFK would have to be just O & D for the most part, which they can do, but wouldn't it be better to start where there isn't a saturated market? With the Open Skies coming, I think it would be wiser to strengthen the Alliance. Right now * Alliance has a foot up in the Europe market over One World due to can fly into FRA and connect with LH. Where as AA would have to fly into LHR to connect with BA. Connecting in LHR adds in extra taxes, but we have BMI for the England market.
CynicalResAgent
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Does anyone know how thy are going to market the merged operations? Will that fleet have a different paint scheme?
SegmentKing
Veteran
this is just like the LH/UA deal, for the most part. Its just anti-trust immunity with some extra goodies.
