BMI Cancels Manchester - Vegas/Chicago and Barbados

swiss69

Saw today that BMI flights to Chicago will cease in January and Barbados and Vegas will cease in April.

Not good news for Northern travellers to those destinations. How long before virgin do the same with their Babrbados service?

chuckley

y would virgin follow suit?!

jonesMUFCforever

Shame because we went to Vegas with BMI from Manchester - good flight and we were thinking of going again.
Too much hassle for me to get to London airports.
This will leave a niche market opportunity for someone to come in instead - hello Mr Ryanair!

Jasper27_2

Well I'm mad as hell becuase I'm booked for Manchester to San Francisco (via Chicago) returning Las Vegas to Manchester in April. I chose BMI because they fly from Manchester and I don't want to go via Heathrow. The BMI website says my travel agent will be in touch next week to let me know what I've been re-booked on. I presume this is going to mean travel through London which could mean extra travel expenses and a possible over night stay which I very much doubt they will pay for. Also I have all my hotels in the US booked so I hope they have capacity on the London flights and don't change my dates. I've flown with BMI from Manchester regularly over the years but they've just lost a customer. I'll be going with some one else in future. Now I suppose there's nothing I can do apart from wait and see.

richardw

Is US Airways from MAN-PHL going to be an alternative for some.

blindman

Jasper27 wrote: »

Well I'm mad as hell becuase I'm booked for Manchester to San Francisco (via Chicago) returning Las Vegas to Manchester in April. I chose BMI because they fly from Manchester and I don't want to go via Heathrow. The BMI website says my travel agent will be in touch next week to let me know what I've been re-booked on. I presume this is going to mean travel through London which could mean extra travel expenses and a possible over night stay which I very much doubt they will pay for. Also I have all my hotels in the US booked so I hope they have capacity on the London flights and don't change my dates. I've flown with BMI from Manchester regularly over the years but they've just lost a customer. I'll be going with some one else in future. Now I suppose there's nothing I can do apart from wait and see.

I meant to post it on this board but forgot :rolleyes:

If I were you I'd take a proactive approach and contact bmi directly to ask what your options are.

If you leave it to the TA they will just take an easy option which may not suit.

As richardw says one option could be US Airways MAN-PHL-SFO as an outbound.

You still could get the bmi LAS-MAN if your return date is before the end of Easter
which is about 26th April.

Once you've determined your best possible options then contact the TA and tell them what you want.

discoinferno_99

blindman wrote: »

If I were you I'd take a proactive approach and contact bmi directly to ask what your options are.

If you leave it to the TA they will just take an easy option which may not suit.

.

However do not bother contacting bmi before 10th November as they currently cannot and will not be able to help whilst they work out alternative routings. They will be sorting out passengers with Chicago flights first as they are affected earlier. Not sure how long that will take. After that they will then start to process the Vegas and Caribbean flights.

As blindman rightly says, do a bit of research as to what suits you in advance and try to push for that when it comes to your flights being sorted.

There should be no need for any overnight stays or out of pocket expenses for your schedule to be re-organised. There are plenty of Star Alliance and partner options for bmi to be able to work around it.

Cade_Foster

You would have thought they would start to work out the routings before they announced this.

I may not be out of pocket at the moment, but I paid more for a direct flight and could have got a indirect one cheaper than so would hope for some money back on this.

discoinferno_99

Cade_Foster wrote: »

You would have thought they would start to work out the routings before they announced this.

I may not be out of pocket at the moment, but I paid more for a direct flight and could have got a indirect one cheaper than so would hope for some money back on this.

You will have the option of a full refund due to the changes. Might be worth going for if you can find a better routing yourself that bmi are not willing to offer.

As for working out the routings in advance, it wasn't really much of an option in this case. Basically this would require discussion with other airlines and information may have got out to the market. Yesterday at 11am the bmi operations staff (both ground based and cabin crew) were called for a meeting and informed that they were losing their jobs. (Some may be able to transfer to Heathrow, but many will not have that choice) As a result there may be 140 redundancies.

Legally (and morally) nothing could be done until these employees were informed of the changes. Yes it is inconvenient for passengers (me included) but under the circumstances, no they couldn't really sort the alternatives in advance of this.

Jasper27_2

I spoke to my TA this morning but have been out since. I used Trailfinders as I've always had great service from them in the past. They haven't been given any definate info from BMI yet so can't tell me anything but hope to in the next few days. They expect BMI will rebook everyones flights and let them know the new schedules. In similar situations in the past they say if you are unhappy with your new schedule they may consider a refund, in which case Trailfinders will sort something else out for me. I've looked at BMI and United who are their US partner. A reshceduled flight out would involve one change at Heathrow which I could live with but the return would be a Las Vegas/Los Angeles/Heathrow/Manchester 24 fiasco which is definately not on. The guy at Trailfinders thought it was all a bit shortsighted of BMI as they sell a lot of BMI flights out of Manchester and people will just choose KLM or some other airline rather than go to Heathrow. I have read reports that BMI can not fill their flights out of Heathrow so I think this at the root of it. I'd rather have a refund and be free to go with who I chose so I'll be investigating my options. I chose BMI direct flights for a reason and it's just a pain in the neck to re-arrange now when I have already booked car hire and hotels. Once everything is sorted I'll be writing to them to let them know what I think and why they've lost a regular customer.

blindman

Jasper27 wrote: »

A reshceduled flight out would involve one change at Heathrow which I could live with but the return would be a Las Vegas/Los Angeles/Heathrow/Manchester 24 fiasco which is definately not on.

Why?

The bmi LAS-MAN service doesn't stop until after around April 26th.

Are you travelling back after this date?