Bye Bye Baby, bmibaby Goodbye

As many in Gibraltar settled down to watch the Jessie J / UB40 megaconcert at Victoria Stadium last night, at the airport the last ever bmibaby flight to Gibraltar was turning around to head back to East Midlands Airport (EMA) for the final time.

 
The route commenced on the 31st March this year.

At that time bmi group (of which baby is the LCC [low cost carrier] element) was owned by Lufthansa Group, themselves having relativly recently acquired it from previous long term owener Sir Micheal Bishop.

Strugling to turn around the bmi group as the world suffered a financial downturn, LH Group put it up for sale. Finally reaching an agreement with British Airways owner IAG (International Consolidated Airlines Group) - which was after the valuable Heathrow slots used by the full service carrier 'bmi' (British Midland International).

Under the terms of the deal, the premium paid for bmi group would be substantially reduced if Lufthansa were not able to find a buyer for the 'bmibaby' and 'bmi regional' subsidiares. LHg were unable to find buyers, so the entirty of bmi group was sold as one (at a substantially reduced price).

Having no desire for the 'regional' or 'baby' elements, the subsidiaries were again put up for sale. BA/IAG sucessfully found a buyer for bmi regional, which was sold to a Aberdeen based group of investors.

bmibaby, which operated out of airports which were not generally slot restricted and used a fleet of predominatly leased 737 aircraft (of the older, less cost efficient variety) probably had most value as a brand! But in the LCC world, customers are usually driven by headline prices, so brands don't attract much value for any loyalty factor.

Unable to find a buyer for baby, it was annouced in early May that all bmibaby operations would finish at the end of the peak summer season in September.

It is a mark of confidence in the only recently launched route to Gibraltar Airport, that flights would continue until the company itself stopped operations. Many other bmibaby routes were pulled immdiatly with a just a couple of weeks notice.

Due to the flight schedule to Gibraltar Airport, the final flight flown was on Saturday, 8th Septemeber. No flight was scheduled for Sundays, and today the entire baby operation comes to a close.

Mainline bmi operations are being merged into British Airways operations at London Heathrow, giving even greater choice for BA passengers (including thouse flying on the BA service from Gibraltar).

Passengers wishing to fly direct to the midlands will of course be able to make use of the Monarch Airlines new service to Birmingham Airport which begins in spring next year. Birmingham Airport is far better connected for public transport users than East Midlands Airport, so that is a plus.

As we celebrate national day tomorrow, do spare a thought for thouse bmibaby staff who now face the challenge of finding new employment in these tough times. Hopefully other airlines will expand into the space and take them on.

Signal shines as Eazi telecom prepare for launch

Anyone who has looked through the list of available mobile networks showing on their phone in Gibraltar can not help to have noticed the appearance of a new network called "26609".

This is the signal for the new "Shine" mobile network from Eazi Telecom who have a telecomunications licence from the Gibraltar Regulatory Authority (www.gra.gi).

The '26609' number comes from the combination of the "266" MCC - Mobile Country Code allocated to Gibraltar, as defined in ITU E.212, and "09" their Mobile Network Code to identify them as a specific network within the country.

They join GIBTEL [26601] the mobile network from Gibtelecom, and CTS [26606].

The other neworks listed are stray 'overspill' signals coming from the masts of Spanish networks across the border in Spain.

The original Eazi Telecom website can be found at www.eazitelecom.com but their new public facing website under the Shine brand is beginging to get populated at www.shine-mobile.com.

There is something interesting regarding domain names here, which we might return to in a day or two...

Microsoft not giving EU data protection to Gib?

This week Microsoft unvieled Outlook.com as their sucessor brand, user interface and domain name to hotmail.com (which they purchased at the end of 1997) as their public webmail service.

However, this reminds us of an ongoing issue with Microsoft accounts, when you register for a Microsoft login for any of their online services, you get a dropdown box to select your country:

However, when you select any other country in the EU, a pop up message appears giving a warning:

The message in the bubble popup "Privacy for residents of the European Union" is actually a link to this page:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-live/sign-up-privacy-rights-ui

It should be noted that the linked page does NOT suggest Microsoft will handle data differently for EU residents (i.e. people to whom they have displayed this message), BUT rather Microsoft is giving a warning that data may not be stored in a country that meets EU standards for data privacy.

However as Gibraltar is fully part of the EU, people resident in Gibraltar should similarly be given the same data protection warning notice as other EU residents.

[The member state of the EU that is called 'the United Kingdom' actually comprises both the UK and Gibraltar - separate countries from each other, but the same member state.]

This issue has gone on for some time and various people have tried to bring it to Microsofts attention without sucess. Perhaps the next step is to contact Microsoft legal.