Looking through the slide deck from the IAG have published on their investors relations site, it is now confirmed that BMI’s membership of Star Alliance will terminate upon completion of the purchase of BMI by IAG.
The transaction is due to be completed by 31st March 2012, subject to regulatory approvals.
The slide deck also reveals a few more features:
- BA will be gaining a fleet comprising 27 aircraft (23 leased and 4 owned)
- The 56 slot number applies to weekdays only
- bmibaby to be wound down and closed if a sale of bmibaby is not executed (or as written “if bmi baby is not sold by May 2012, Lufthansa will provide compensation to cover costs of orderly exit”)
- It looks like mixed terminal running to start with, with the possibility of moving to T5/T3 (“Possibility to co-locate bmi mainline capacity at Heathrow in the Western Campus (T5 / T3) with the rest of IAG, after T2 phase 1 completion in 2013)
- The IAG slot portfolio will increase to around 53% post completion
- BMI used 25% of it slots with regional aircraft (ERJ-145’s) for Summer 2011.
Slide deck is at http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MTE5NzI3fENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1. Worth a read.
Subject to nothing else breaking out, I’ll be doing an analysis a bit later on this evening.
BA will have total control of LHR!
Which isn’t like Air France’s hub CDG, KLM’s hub at AMS and LH’s own hub at FRA where these feel like Fortress Hubs….
United can barely fill its planes to LHR from/to IAD/EWR wonder if this will make things even worse.
It depends how much traffic was O&D traffic. If there was connecting traffic onwards, then it could be a bit more fun for United to find onward connections.
Thankfully, T1 has a lot of Star Alliance carriers there still who cover some of the slack BMI would have lost. Worse comes to worse, I’m sure UA will extend its EI Codeshare to get people over to Ireland at least…