Having previously used British Midland for several flights from Heathrow to Edinburgh and back (special offers made it as cheap to fly as take the train…) and not having any recollection of the flights being out of the ordinary (thereby presumably indicating that the flights were neither eventful, nor was the service so exemplary or so shocking that the flight was memorable…) that this opinion is based solely on my experiences of a recent return flight between London Heathrow and Belfast City airport. Unfortunately the flying experience was somewhat tarnished by baggage related problems, although ultimately it would be hard to attribute all blame upon British Midland. I booked my tickets via Expedia, and got a paper ticket, there not being any e-ticketing possibility (unlike BA), and the price of my return flight was 69 quid return (not bad really although not as cheap as say Easyjet would have been had I flown London Luton to Belfast (International).

Whilst this was not British Midland’s fault directly, they did say that they would of course follow it up, issued me with baggage forms for an insurance claim, took my mobile numbers and said that had someone else picked it up by mistake, they would ensure that the person responsible would deliver it personally to my hotel, before they could claim their own baggage. This duly happened and there were several courtesy calls throughout the afternoon before the “culprits” – a elderly couple who had decided to have a nap before unpacking delivered it to me in my hotel with profuse apologies. On the way back my cricket bag was badly damaged (a strap was ripped and the nature of the damage would make a repair more expensive than having the bag replaced) and they instantly took responsibility for the baggage handler’s sloppy handling, and I will shortly be getting a new cricket bag courtesy of them.

Being part of the Star Alliance Group, BMI looks like it will become a more popular choice for me, as the Star Alliance includes Lauda Air, Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa, which are the three airlines which I use the most in general, being based in Austria and with Frankfurt being my nearest hub airport. There are some 15 or so partners in the Star Alliance so it means that partner airlines can be used for a lot of routes.

The website www.flybmi.com (the official British Midland website) offers a lot of information about schedules as well as e-commerce via Secure Servers allowing you to be able to book your flights over the internet using your credit card. There are frequent updates regarding cancellations / alterations of flight routes as well as new routes launched and the website works well with easy navigation.