Well hush my mouth…

In the last two blogs I have made reference to bmi flying ‘ghost flights’ in an effort to keep hold of its slots at Heathrow.

The story originated with The Times after the airline’s chief exec Tim Bye stated that bmi will “have to keep flying to preserve our slots.” After the story made it’s way from the Times across this glorious World Wide Web, where upon I found it in my in-box, the airline started to get a bit of stick.

Environmental groups and major political parties all weighed in to criticise the idea given the carbon footprints flights leave when they’re full, let alone flying empty. As a result Tim Bye has stated that his comments were misinterpreted. The press misinterpret? Well I never.

Speaking to the TTG, Bye stated: “We’ll be taking a look at our winter sectors and identifying which ones are weak flights. It may be that on some routes we drop a quiet middle-of-the-day service, reducing from eight to seven daily flights. Nothing is for sure yet.”

Cutting flights seems to be all that’s on the agenda for Michale O’Leary at the moment as Ryanair will ground eight aircraft at Stansted and drop 250 flights a week from November to March. The airline will also be grounding flights at Dublin, 150 to be precise, and closing seven of its bases in Europe for six weeks.

Failing to have hedged against the oil price and trying to cut outgoings still gave the ever-argumentative Mr O’Leary cause to go on the offensive, this time at airport charges, in particular those at Stansted.  Airport charges at Stansted are now £10 per passenger and O’Leary voiced his sentiment that “we hope the Competition Commission will call for the break up of BAA.”

The ever-marching price of fuel costs and the shifting economic climate have also meant that Quantas are looking at cuts. In this instance, unfortunately, it’s staff not flights. The carrier is to gut 1,500 jobs from it’s workforce with 1,300 of those going from Australia. Closure of call centres in London and Tuscon will shed 99 jobs and the airline has ditched planes to hire a further 1,200 .

Quantas have also had to introduce a recruitment and executive pay freeze with chief executive Geoff Dixon saying the airline industry is now “as tough as I’ve seen it.” The airline will also be retiring up to 22 of its older aircraft.

Bit of a sad one to end the week on so let’s hope Monday brings some good news.