Well, firstly we have a name at last for the buyers of BMI Regional – Granite Aviation according to Flight International. And there’s a bit of a snag in the sale due the company taking over as Granite is an investment group – not an airline and thus has no airline infrastructure in place.
This means things like lack of support for planes is currently lacking. An agreement for BMI to support the new owners of Regional for 6 months after the sale completion has been factored in.
BMI Regional (or the bit of BMI that made money due to some of the prices charged) operates Four ERJ-135’s and Fifteen ERJ-145’s.
For those of you who thought that the ERJ-145’s are to be banished from BMI Mainline operations, the Regional company has agreed to operate four of it’s ERJ-145’s for Mainline for a bit.
The other bit of news (and if your name is say… Virgin Atlantic) is that the European Commission has been notified by IAG about the purchase transaction, with a 16th March 2012 deadline for an initial decision. All in, the deal could be done and dusted by both IAG and Lufthansa by the magic date of end of Q1 – 31 March.