bmi regional

If you stood at a German regional airport between 2001 and 2019, you may know the sight: a small jet with two engines at the rear, a British registration and the titles “bmi regional.” bmi regional was one of Europe’s more unusual airlines – too big to be just a feeder, too small for a hub of its own, and with a history that runs from Scotland through the British Midland family to a final phase as flybmi. The airline has been history since February 2019. This page shows you how to classify old sightings correctly and why photos of these jets are collector’s items today.

bmi regional at a glance

bmi regional was a British regional airline that existed from 1987 to February 2019. Latterly it was headquartered in the Pegasus Business Park at East Midlands Airport, while its operations center stayed in Aberdeen from the start. The most important bases were Aberdeen, Bristol and – especially interesting for German spotters – Munich. Other stations in Britain, Belgium and Sweden were added.

The business model was mixed: its own scheduled flights between regional airports, routes in cooperation with big network airlines and flights on behalf of other companies. It is precisely this mix that makes the airline exciting for spotters, since behind a Lufthansa or Brussels Airlines flight number there could well be a British Embraer jet.

From Business Air to flybmi: the history

The story doesn’t begin in the English Midlands but in Scotland. In September 1987, Business Air was created from the merger of Business Air Centre with Euroair’s Scottish business. In April 1988, scheduled service began – with the Saab 340, a typical turboprop of that era for thin routes.

The years in the British Midland family shaped the name. The parent bmi British Midland was partly owned by Lufthansa at times and wholly owned from 2009. When the Lufthansa Group sold bmi to the International Airlines Group in April 2012, the Heathrow business moved to British Airways. The regional subsidiary and the low-cost offshoot bmibaby didn’t fit into these plans. While bmibaby was shut down the same year, bmi regional found a buyer: Sector Aviation Holdings, behind which stood, among others, the Business Air founders. From October 2012, the airline flew independently.

In 2015 the next restructuring came. bmi regional became part of Airline Investments Limited (AIL), which also included Loganair. The two remained independent airlines but worked together through a codeshare. In July 2018, bmi regional renamed itself flybmi, after its own web address. It wasn’t a completely new look: the logo wasn’t redesigned but built on the familiar bmi brand.

Codes and callsigns over time

In a good 30 years, the airline changed its identifiers several times. For going through old photos and logbooks, an overview is therefore worthwhile:

Period	IATA code	ICAO code	Callsign
1987–1998	II	GNT	GRANITE
1998–2001	BD	GNT	GRANITE
2001–2012	BM (inconsistent in sources)	BMR	KITTIWAKE
2012–2019	BM	BMR	MIDLAND

One detail stands out: between 1998 and 2001, the regional subsidiary flew with the IATA code BD, which British Midland itself also used. From 2001, the code BM is listed for bmi regional; according to some sources, the switch to BM was only officially announced in October 2012, when the airline became independent. bmi regional only took over the callsign “MIDLAND” when the old parent merged into British Airways in 2012 – so the link to the name British Midland stayed audible until the end.

The fleet: small Embraer jets

When flybmi gave up in February 2019, the fleet consisted of 17 Embraer regional jets. Before that, over the years, the airline had used various types, from turboprops to a four-engine jet.

Type	Role	Seats	Period	Spotter note
Embraer ERJ-145	Backbone of the fleet	49	until 2019 (14 at the end)	Longer variant, many with G-RJX… registrations
Embraer ERJ-135	For thin routes	37	until 2019 (3 at the end)	Clearly shorter fuselage, otherwise very similar
Saab 340	Turboprop of the early years	–	Business Air era	Twin-engine propeller regional aircraft
Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante	Early type	–	historic	Small turboprop from Brazil
BAe 146-300	Early type	–	historic	Four-engine high-wing jet

The Embraer ERJ-145 was the workhorse of the last years: a slender regional jet with two engines at the rear and a T-tail, built by the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer. The ERJ-135 is the shortened sister with fewer seats. At bmi regional it was used where even 49 seats were too many. The airline’s beginnings are also documented on type pages of their own: the Saab 340 and the Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante.

In 2018, the airline was still considering larger types such as the Embraer 190 or the Bombardier CRJ900 as successors. An order never came about.

ERJ-145 or ERJ-135? How to tell them apart

On old photos, the two Embraer variants are easy to confuse. Livery, engines, tail and cockpit are the same – the difference lies in the length.

If you’re unsure, the registration helps: through the British register you can look up the exact type for every G- registration. How that works is explained in the article on British G- registrations. The guide Recognizing regional jets offers an overview of similar jets such as the CRJ, Avro RJ and E-Jets.

How to recognize bmi regional

Three features help you most in classifying old photos:

• Titles on the fuselage: “bmi regional” until July 2018, then “flybmi.” The logo consistently built on the bmi brand.
• Aircraft type: in the last years almost always an ERJ-145 or ERJ-135 – a tail with two engines and a T-tail is a strong hint.
• Registration: British G-, many aircraft carried registrations of the G-RJX… series, for example G-RJXA.

Because the airline flew through codeshares with big partners, you shouldn’t confuse the flight number with the operator. A Lufthansa flight from Munich could in reality be a bmi regional jet. For your logbook, the operator counts – that is, what’s on the fuselage and what the registration reveals.

Network and partners: bmi regional in Germany

For German spotters, bmi regional was one of the most visible British regional airlines. Munich was a base of its own. From summer 2015, in coordination with Lufthansa, the airline took over routes there such as Bern, Liège and Rotterdam, which Lufthansa CityLine had flown before; later Brno was added, among others. There had been a codeshare agreement with Lufthansa since 2014. If you stood at the visitors’ hill at Munich Airport back then, you had a good chance of a bmi regional jet among the Lufthansa aircraft.

Toward the end, flybmi also served Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Nuremberg, Saarbrücken and Rostock-Laage, among others. There was a particularly close cooperation with Brussels Airlines: from 2014, bmi regional flew the Brussels–Bristol route on behalf of the Belgians, plus connections such as Newcastle–Brussels, and at the end an ERJ-145 was operating for Brussels Airlines.

Partner	Type of cooperation	Examples
Lufthansa	Codeshare and cooperation	Routes from Munich
Brussels Airlines	Codeshare and flights on its behalf	Brussels–Bristol, Newcastle–Brussels
Loganair	Codeshare, same owners from 2015	Connections within Britain
Air Dolomiti, Air France, Turkish Airlines	Codeshare	Connections to their networks

In addition, the airline at times flew factory shuttles for industrial companies, for example until 2015 for Airbus between British sites and Toulouse. Such flights weren’t in the regular schedule – photos of them are correspondingly rare.

The end in February 2019

On February 16, 2019, flybmi ceased operations, canceled all flights and filed for administration. 376 employees in Britain, Germany, Sweden and Belgium were affected. The airline justified the step with several factors: increased fuel and CO2 costs – the latter also because British airlines could only take part in the EU emissions trading system to a limited extent due to Brexit –, lost flight contracts in Europe due to Brexit uncertainty and tough competition in regional traffic. According to the airline, the owners had invested more than £40 million over six years and were not willing to put in more.

Industry observers saw Brexit as one factor among several. Regional airlines with small jets were under pressure in general in those years: high costs per seat, strong competition from low-cost airlines and little room on prices. Just a year later, Flybe, another large British regional airline, went the same way. An overview of this and other cases is given in the article Major airline collapses in Europe.

The network didn’t disappear entirely. Loganair took over some routes from Aberdeen (to Bristol, Oslo and Esbjerg) and from Newcastle (to Brussels and Stavanger) in March 2019 and used Embraer 145s from Aberdeen for them. A large part of the fleet also moved to the sister airline. If you’re interested in the current state of the British regional scene, you’ll find the closest relatives in Loganair and Eastern Airways.

Documenting old sightings properly

Photos of bmi regional are now historical documents. To keep them usable ten years from now, clean records are worthwhile. A good starting point is the airline’s home airport: at the East Midlands Aeropark, you had the airline’s Embraer fleet right in front of your lens for years.

How to structure a logbook for the long term is shown in the guide Documenting sightings. And if you want to place Europe’s regional airlines as a whole, the overview Regional airlines in Europe helps.

Common mix-ups

• Equating bmi regional with bmi British Midland – the parent flew larger jets from Heathrow and merged into British Airways in 2012, while the regional subsidiary kept flying until 2019.
• Confusing bmi regional with bmibaby – bmibaby was the low-cost offshoot with Boeing 737s and was shut down in 2012.
• Thinking flybmi is a new airline – flybmi was just the new name from July 2018, the company and fleet stayed the same.
• Equating a Lufthansa flight number with a Lufthansa jet – from Munich, bmi regional often flew under an LH codeshare.
• Logging an ERJ-135 as an ERJ-145 – you recognize the shorter variant by fuselage length and number of windows.
• Classifying later Loganair photos as bmi regional – same registrations, but a different operator.

Conclusion

For three decades, bmi regional was a fixture of European regional traffic: founded as Business Air in Scotland, grown up in the British Midland family and finally operating independently with a compact Embraer fleet. For German spotters, the airline was present mainly in Munich and at smaller airports, often hidden behind Lufthansa flight numbers. It hasn’t existed since February 2019 – all the more valuable are well-documented photos with registration, date and place.