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I first flew with BMI (aka British Midland) some 17 years ago just before my daughter became a twinkle in my eye, I did a return flight to the Schipol, enjoying a full breakfast en-route, accompanied by my first ever taste of champagne.
Fast forward 16 years, and the need arose to book ... Read review
A review by sue.51 on British Midland Airways - BD February 20th, 2005
Author's product rating:
Food Quality
Satisfactory
Customer Service
Friendly and attentive
Punctuality
Good
Space
Comfortable
Value for Money
Good
Advantages:
good leg room, efficient service, excellent prices, on - line booking, loyalty points through diamond club
Disadvantages:
Need to book early for best prices, flight times may change, changes may be restricted to lowest far tickets
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
For some reason I have always felt an affinity with BMI, particularly back in the bad old days when airlines were few and far between, and air travel for the majority was a charter supplier on a package holiday, and economy seats on scheduled routes were the price of current business ones.
I first flew with BMI (aka British Midland) some 17 years ago just before my daughter became a twinkle in my eye, I did a return flight to the Schipol, enjoying a full breakfast en-route, accompanied by my first ever taste of champagne.
Fast forward 16 years, and the need arose to book flights to Madrid to visit my sister in law. Flights to this part of Spain are still relatively few and far between except with BMI, BA and EasyJet (who I hate with a vengeance) and when booking their winter schedules weren’t available, so it was down to BMI or BA. On comparing the two, BMI definitely came in cheapest at a mere £66 per return ticket, couple this with the fact that I have a BMI Mastercard, and they very kindly waive the £4 booking fee, hence the deed was done.
NEVER HEARD OF THEM? BMI are the UK’s second biggest full service UK airline and hold 14% of all take off and landing slots at Heathrow, their main base. As their name suggests their operations started in the Midlands back in the 1930s. Their website lays claim to being a pioneering force in UK aviation, for more info visit: www.flybmi.com
WHERE DO THEY FLY? The majority of BMI’s direct flights are to European destinations, although they are Star Alliance members, and therefore flights can be booked through their site to a variety of worldwide destinations. They also fly from most corners of the UK, (except Wales) but destinations from many airports are restricted to one or two, so if you want something more exotic, you may be drawn to flying from Heathrow, Manchester, Aberdeen, Glasgow or Belfast. Most of these airports seem to have link flights to London, and therefore you could find yourself changing / stopping at Heathrow.
BOOKING In common with most good airlines, this can be done on-line at www.flybmi.com. Unlike the British Airways site, where you select your departure airport and get a free for all on destinations, at BMI you don’t have to guess the code for your destination, as each airports routes are automatically entered into the “to” menu in a drop down menu.
Once you have decided your departure airport and destination select your preferred dates, up to 361 days in advance (BA is 350). Then, select the number of adults, children and infants (under twos) you want to book for. The maximum number of seats that can be reserved in any one booking is nine (adults and children), however, you can take one infant free for every adult (over the age of 12) travelling.
Once this is done, you can select your class of travel, although I would guess most would automatically select “cheapest”, but you can also chose business or economy flexible. Be aware that the cheaper your ticket, the more difficulties you may encounter making changes such as dates and names. In line with all airlines, any changes will incur charges.
You will then be presented with flight data and price (if available) for your chosen date, and have the facility to move backwards / forwards for new dates, quite useful if you can be flexible about travel dates and are on a limited budget. This layout is quite different to both EasyJet who immediately show three dates of travel, and BA who by default display 7 days either side of your chosen date, automatically displaying the lowest possible price for travel.
Although I am extra cautious when booking flights to ensure that I have selected the correct dates, I do know of others who have made errors because of the system operated by the other two, and hence personally do have a preference for BMI’s system
Once you have decided when, where and how many wish to travel you will then be directed to their secure server for booking. Be aware that any prices quoted DO NOT include service charges and airport taxes, and if you are booking with a credit card other than a BMI affiliated card, you will incur a surcharge of £4. There is no extra charge for using a debit card.
This facility is the same for bookings on BMI Baby flights, however, I have often found that flights booked through BMI are cheaper than they Budget baby and period of advance booking is definitely an advantage compared to BMI Baby who book on seasons.
When booking, you are encouraged to create a personal profile, and can amend, change and cancel your reservation on-line. A booking profile is not mandatory; however, you will need it if you are a diamond club member to acquire your travel points.
Once booked, you will receive a confirmation e-mail advising you of your booking details, and if your route is still on paper based tickets, you will receive these within days. Once again, in common with most other large airlines, BMI are moving down the e-ticketing route.
NOTE: Ticket prices are quoted for one way journeys and do not include taxes and other charges; the web facility will also advise you whether the flight can be booked through the BMI call centre, and how much extra it will cost you. The standard seems to be a £5 discount for each leg of the journey booked on-line. Interestingly, some of the flights cannot be booked through the call centre, and although I did manage to navigate the website without a mouse (on my accessibility drive again) the process was cumbersome, and I suspect that those in particular with vision impairments may have difficulty using the site. This combined with the fact that a large percentage of the population still do not have access to the internet could be deemed discriminatory.
CHECK-IN We were flying from Heathrow Terminal 1, the queues were long and the airport busy, but there are numerous self service check-ins dotted around the check-in area, where you can either swipe your credit card you booked with, or use your tickets (if you have any). Here is where I encountered my first and only problem, as the machine did not associated my credit card with the booking, luckily I had the tickets and was able to check-in, select our seats on the plane and drop our hold luggage off at the fast bag drop; there is no doubt that at busy airports this technology makes the whole travelling process considerably easier.
If you are a diamond silver or gold customer, or travelling business class, you can skip the queues through priority check-in.
ON-BOARD BMI have an array of planes seating between 37 and 244 passengers, our journey was on a Airbus 320-200, a 156 seater, providing 3 rows of business class, the rest economy of some description, with plenty of leg-room, (according to www.uk-air.net, BMI provide 32 inches) in a clean and relatively new plane. However, in common with every experience I have had of flying on an Airbus, they rattle like hell on take off and landing, I am sure someone on here will explain why.
The scheduled time for the journey down to Madrid was around 2¼ hours, although thanks to a strong tail wind on the way down, we were only in the air for 1 hour 35 minutes and on the way back just under 2 hours.
The short duration of the flight meant that the trolleys seems to be persistently moving up and down the aisle delivering food and drinks, and collecting rubbish. Refreshment from the bar was one free drink of your choice, alcoholic or otherwise, a coffee or other soft drink, and a sandwich, the choice on the way out being Egg and Spinach or Chicken and bacon, and on the way back, Ham and egg or cheese and pickle, relatively tasty, but not a patch on my memories of the full breakfast and the champagne.
The Hold luggage allowance was 20Kg per person, and one piece of hand luggage plus a laptop in the cabin, although it seems that no-one takes much notice of the cabin allowances these days judging by the high number of suitcases packed into the overhead lockers, I am sure taking the limits to way above those clearly written on the edge of each lid.
On the return journey there was no self check in facility, however, there was no queue and check-in was swift and efficient.
There was no facility for entertainment while on board, but this did not pose a problem bearing in mind it was a relatively short flight.
The plane had three toilets, 1 in the front and two at the back, however, the front one was restricted use for business class customers, however, because I couldn’t get to the back of the plane because of the almost constant stream of trolleys back and fore, I managed to get to see how the other half live, nothing spectacular really other than hand cream and individual cloth hand towels in addition to the paper ones normally provided.
Although there was a nice smell of hot food wafting down the plane from the business area, with the sufficient legroom provided in economy, coupled with a free drink and sarnie, means I would be hard pushed to justify spending around an extra £80 each way to upgrade for such a short flight.
All messages on board were delivered in English and Spanish, and their acoustics were far superior to ThomsonFlights, ThomsonFly and EasyJet. i.e. if you spoke one of the languages you could actually hear and digest what was being said.
DIAMOND CLUB Anyone can join the diamond club when booking a flight with BMI, and rewards are quite generous, particularly if you take advantage of the BMI Mastercard issued by MBNA, where you collect miles for every point spent, helping you to build up destination points much more quickly, which can be used for flights with BMI and other star alliance partners.
MY VERDICT We booked early to get the best prices, and personally I think under £200 for three return flights to Madrid is excellent, the flights were on time in both directions check-in was swift and efficient, if a little perfunctory. Seat room was ample compared to that offered by EasyJet and personally I believe that the ability of chose your own seats is a definite bonus, even though the facility is not currently available at all airports, I suspect it will only be a matter of time.
Would I use them again? Without a shadow of a doubt, the only down side being that the nearest airport I can fly from is Heathrow, still, this is a relatively easy run from my part of South Wales, and therefore it could be worse, it took us a little over 3½ hours to get home on a Friday night in rush hour traffic, had we have been flying from Gatwick yesterday, judging by the radio reports, the journey would have been considerably longer.
The only real downside to the whole experience was that our original flights were changed in and outbound by around 2 hours, pushing us into rush hour traffic timings necessitating an overnight stay in Heathrow before departure.
Other than that the whole experience was probably one of my smoothest of flying in recent times, my daughter, who up till now had only experienced charter flights was also suitably impressed.
Highly recommended
To find out for yourself visit: www.flybmi.com or call:
Advantages: Cheap, reliable and great customer service. Disadvantages: None
Who are British Midland (BMI)?
According to BMI’s website, www.flybmi.com, BMI are the UK’s second largest full service airline, operating over 2000 flights a week from various airports around the UK. They are based at London Heathrow airport where they have a fleet of 41 jet aircraft. They fly between numerous airports across the UK. Full details can be found at the above named website. BMI are also a member of the Star Alliance. The ... ...and London Heathrow (Easyjet and British Airways), BMI are about the same as Easyjet but when you consider the allocated seating and free drink, its way better value. I have booked a British Airways flight that cost me £68 but generally British Airways are more expensive.
Check in
Check-in is relatively simple. As with most airlines, you will require some form of photographic identification. At both Aberdeen and London Heathrow, BMI staff were ...
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...of fifteen international airlines.
Here is a list of all partners where miles can be collected and redeemed:
~~~ STAR ALLIANCE PARTNER AIRLINES
Air Canada (AC), Air New Zealand (NZ), All Nippon Airways (NH), Ansett Australia (AN), Austrian Airlines (OS), BritishMidland (BD), Lauda Air (NG), Lufthansa (LH), Mexicana (MX), Scandinavian Airlines (SK), Singapore Airlines (SQ), Thai Airways (TG), Tyrolean Airways (VO), United Airlines (UA), Varig (RG).
~~~ OTHER PARTNER AIRLINES
Adria Airways (JP)*, Air China (CA)*, Air Dolomiti (EN), Air One (AP), Augsburg Airways (IQ), Condor (DE), Croatia Airlines (OU)*, Czech Airlines (OK)*, Eurowings (EW), Luxair (LG), Qatar Airways (QR), South African Airways (SA), Spanair (JK), Team Lufthansa franchises.
(*selected routes only.)
~~~ HOTEL PARTNERS
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