bmibaby to pull out of Manchester
NEARLY 100 jobs are under threat after budget airline bmibaby decided to pull its services from Manchester Airport.
The airline, which operates 40 flights a week to13 UK and European destinations from Manchester, said it wanted to focus its resources on areas where there are “strong growth opportunities”.
At the end of the summer it will move two aircraft from Manchester, as well as two from Cardiff, to service routes from Birmingham, Belfast and East Midlands airports.
The decision will affect 61 cabin crew and pilots based at Manchester along with three engineers and 33 airport services staff. The airline has started a 30-day consultation process with the unions and is promising jobs in the Midlands for the crew and engineers.
Some 69 staff are affected in Cardiff where the airline operates nine routes. A spokesman said they would all be redeployed.
The changes do not affect services run by British Midland International, which has six routes, and BMI Regional which flies to Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Lyon.
In a statement the airline said: “In the current economic climate it is essential for bmibaby to focus on airports where the airline already has a strong market presence and where there are strong growth opportunities for the bmibaby business.
“Therefore bmibaby has optimised their current flying programme and will reposition two Boeing 737 aircraft currently based at Cardiff, and two Boeing 737 aircraft currently based at Manchester to Belfast, Birmingham and East Midlands Airports from winter 2011.”
Andrew Harrison, managing director of Manchester Airport, said: “We understand bmibaby’s reasons for the decision and remind our passengers that the destinations will still be served by other carriers in the winter.
“We continue to see strong growth from carriers such as Monarch, Ryanair, Flybe, easyjet and Jet2.com at Manchester and are confident of a strong summer programme that will still include bmibaby. We’ll also still see the airline group presence at Manchester with bmi keeping a significant presence at Manchester and bmibaby will still be flying from one of our other airports at East Midlands.”
