After two days in the job, Wolfgang Prock-Schauer makes a quarter of bmibaby staff redundant

A quarter of the staff at bmibaby have been told they are to lose their jobs, only two days after Lufthansa, its parent, put a new boss in charge of the loss-making airline.
Lufthansa took control of bmi, formerly British Midland, this year and appointed Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, the former head of Jet Airways, of India, two days ago to turn it around. He took over from Nigel Turner, the previous chief executive.
The company said that 158 of its 633 employees would go after a 90-day consultation period. The job losses will include 54 pilots and 82 cabin crew based at Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff. There will also be 22 management redundancies.
The airline will consolidate its operations into East Midlands airport and will expand the number of routes it operates from there. This will lead to 25 new jobs at the airport and staff at its other bases will be consulted on whether they want to move.
Bmibaby’s reduced presence at Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff will result in its aircraft fleet shrinking from 17 to 12.
Bmi lost £100 million last year and its losses this year could be twice that amount. Lufthansa had been considering a number of options for bmi, including a sale.
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic both expressed interest but Lufthansa has dropped the sale after the bids fell short of its expectations. The German flag carrier is no longer in negotiations to sell its loss-making subsidiary. It wants to restructure the airline before a possible sale next year. One of the restructuring priorities has been bmibaby, founded in 2002 to offer low-cost flights from regional airports.
05/11/09 David Robertson/Times Online

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Categories: Foreign Nov 2009