Just got this taken from the CAA website:
On 2 December 2005 British Midland Airways Limited t/a bmi applied to wet lease a Qatari registered Airbus A330-302 aircraft. Details of the application were published in Official Record Series 2 No 1726. Ministers have concluded that they should refuse a waiver because they are not satisfied that bmi has demonstrated a genuine commercial requirement for the aircraft within its own operations.
Oh Dear… :confused:
By: greekdude1 - 15th March 2006 at 00:00
Will it make any difference when QR officially join Star later on this year or early next year?
By: Sunjet757 - 14th March 2006 at 23:07
This was always very strange. BMI were leasing the aircraft from Qatar Airways however they were code sharing on the service anyway as flight QR4011/4012. Now that BMI have been turned down Qatar Airways are still going to operate the service anyway in their own right as QR12/11. BMI will now code share and sell seats on all three of the QR services ex London Heathrow. Interestingly the BMI planned service (15:05 ex LHR/07:50 ex DOH) still has two flight numbers at present BD773/BD774 still shows in the booking systems as subject to government approval along with the new code share flight numbers BD2654/BD2653.
By: philgatwick05 - 14th March 2006 at 21:57
It’s because bmi have put a ‘false’ lease in, they are only wanting it so that Qatar can do another LHR-Doha on bmi’s AOC (sort of) as Qatar have used up their alloted quota of services per week! Therefore they are using the British side (BA/bmi/VS etc) as their is spare capacity on this quota…..hope I explained that ok??
Scott
Clear as crystal – thanks 😀
By: Humberside - 14th March 2006 at 21:36
Why not just sell the slot as they did to us in the past?
Because Qatar Airways can not operate any more flights to the UK. By wet leasing an aircraft to bmi, bmi where techinically operating the flight, using frequencies allocated to UK airlines under the UK-Qatar Air Service Agreement. The LHR slot wasn’t the big issue in this case
By: Hugh Jarse - 14th March 2006 at 21:24
In a previous life I used to operate in and out of LHR utilising a BMI slot. It is something that is done but didn’t realise they would go to the extent of wet leasing an aircraft. Why not just sell the slot as they did to us in the past?
I would also like to think that the CAA looked at the availabilty of crews and aircraft in this country and closer to home and decided there was capacity at home or closer to it that could provide that.
By: mmemovements - 14th March 2006 at 20:30
It’s because bmi have put a ‘false’ lease in, they are only wanting it so that Qatar can do another LHR-Doha on bmi’s AOC (sort of) as Qatar have used up their alloted quota of services per week! Therefore they are using the British side (BA/bmi/VS etc) as their is spare capacity on this quota…..hope I explained that ok??
Scott
By: tomfellows - 14th March 2006 at 19:30
sounds a complete joke to me as well
By: philgatwick05 - 14th March 2006 at 18:39
I can’t get my head round it?!?! 😀 Why should the UK block the lease on anything other than safety grounds?
By: Humberside - 14th March 2006 at 18:23
I think the government has seen that in practise the plane is just for another Qatar Airways flight from LHR to Doha. Time to renegociate the air service agreement was Qatar?
By: andrewm - 14th March 2006 at 18:05
Why did bmi want to lease the aircraft? Strange that airlines have to demonstrate soo hard that they need an aircraft to expand when some of it will be for exporting services rather than importing. Maybe ministers want bmi to leave from within Europe or the UK and that is why they opposed lease?
Sign In
March 14, 2006 at 4:31 pm