Bmibaby Switches Flights to Belfast City

Bmibaby currently links Belfast International with each of its four UK based operations in Birmingham, Cardiff, East Midlands and Manchester.

CONSOLIDATION OF COSTS AND NETWORK

The decision to switch airports in the Northern Ireland capital would appear to make sense as it will link bmibaby scheduled flights into Belfast with its mainline operation BMI, which operates over fourty weekly flights from London Heathrow into Belfast City. Rolling the bmibaby base across to Belfast City will help the airline control costs and efficiency and is a logical step for bmibaby. The question is whether bmibaby can carry its traffic across town with it.

The Belfast City market is largely operated by regional aircraft due to the payload restrictions that are in place. Budget carrier Ryanair discontinued its Belfast City operations in October citing the continued lack of a runway extension allowing the B737-800 to operate at full capacity. Flybe took full advantage of this Ryanair move by further consolidating its dominance at Belfast City by adding routes to Liverpool, Bristol and East Midlands.

The table below illustrates the current airline share at Belfast City

Source Flightbase 14-20 November 2010

WHAT WILL THIS MEAN FOR FLYBE?

Bmibaby will compete head-to- head with Flybe which operates scheduled frequencies to all of the bmibaby bases from Belfast City, with smaller Q400 and E-195 equipment, whilst bmibaby operates a fleet of larger B737-300 and B737-500 aircraft, with seven based at East Midlands, three based in Birmingham, with two apiece in Manchester and Cardiff.

One piece of consolation for Flybe is the fact that bmibaby is not in significant expansion mode and any expansion would seem unlikely for the next two or three years. It focus is largely based on adding service to Germany since BMI’s integration into the Lufthansa group, whilst adding sunshine markets from its UK bases. New routes for Summer 2011 include services to Ibiza from Cardiff and East Midlands. The addition of bmibaby flights into Belfast City may mean that the market to certain cities in the UK is now concentrated at one airport which may generate some extra traffic for Flybe.

THE IMPACT ON BELFAST INTERNATIONAL

Belfast International will lose around 17% of its scheduled capacity when bmibaby switches to Belfast City and the airport will look to backfill this lost capacity. easyJet could operationally fill these routes, however its aircraft would be large for these routes and so the market would need a high level of stimulation to fill this capacity. The province however has had years of intense low fare competition to the mainland with Jet2.com and Aer Lingus all battling for capacity meaning that the market will not likely support the increase in capacity and pressure on yields. Whether easyJet would be prepared to operate these routes would therefore be questionanle.