bmibaby

Budget flights from the English Midlands, Boeing 737s of the Classic generation and a name you won’t forget: bmibaby was the low-cost subsidiary of bmi British Midland between 2002 and 2012. If you stood at the fence at East Midlands, Birmingham or Manchester in those years, you had the jets with the big “bmibaby.com” titles in front of your lens all the time – and they showed up in Cologne/Bonn and Munich, too. The airline has been gone since September 2012. This page shows you how to classify old sightings correctly, how to tell the two 737 variants in the fleet apart, and why photos of bmibaby belong in every well-organized archive.

bmibaby at a glance

bmibaby was a British low-cost airline that existed from 2002 to 2012. It was headquartered at Donington Hall in Castle Donington, right next to East Midlands Airport and in the same place as its parent bmi British Midland. East Midlands was home and for a long time the largest base; from 2005, Birmingham Airport was added as a second leg.

The concept was typical for a budget airline of the early 2000s: point-to-point services from British regional airports to vacation destinations in Spain, Portugal, France and Italy, plus city destinations across Europe. Instead of the expensive hub logistics of its parent out of Heathrow, what counted was low costs, high load factors and sales through its own website – hence the “bmibaby.com” titles. How this model works in general is explained in the article How low-cost carriers work.

From founding to the last flight

bmibaby was created in January 2002. British Midland was responding to the success of easyJet and Ryanair, which were drawing more and more passengers away from the traditional airlines with low fares. Instead of just defending itself, bmi founded its own budget offshoot – using aircraft that were becoming available at the parent: bmi was switching its own fleet to Airbus at the time, and the Boeing 737s moved to the new subsidiary.

The first flight went from East Midlands to Málaga in March 2002 – a route that also marked the end ten years later.

Over the years, bmibaby tried to stand out from the pure budget competition. In 2007 it introduced an offer for business travelers in which you could book only the extras you actually needed. In addition, miles could be earned on bmibaby flights in its parent’s Diamond Club frequent flyer program. On board there was the magazine “Yeah baby!” and a snack menu called “Tiny Bites” – the pun on baby ran through the entire brand.

The bmi family: parent, regional subsidiary and budget offshoot

To understand bmibaby, it helps to look at the group structure. In the 2000s, British Midland consisted of three airline operations with clearly separated roles:

Airline	Role	Typical aircraft	Fate
bmi British Midland	Network airline out of London Heathrow	Airbus short- and medium-haul jets	Merged into British Airways in 2012
bmi regional	Regional service with small jets	Embraer ERJ-135 and ERJ-145	Sold in 2012, independent until 2019
bmibaby	Low-cost service out of the Midlands	Boeing 737-300 and 737-500	Shut down in September 2012

Lufthansa had held a stake in bmi for some time: on July 1, 2009 it took the majority, and in November 2009 it also took the remaining shares from SAS. That meant bmibaby, too, belonged indirectly to the Lufthansa Group for a few years. The budget offshoot never had Star Alliance membership, however.

The fleet: all Boeing 737 Classic

Throughout its entire history, bmibaby relied exclusively on the Boeing 737, specifically the so-called Classic generation. Many aircraft came from the fleet of its parent, and most were leased. At the time of closure in September 2012, the fleet consisted of 14 aircraft with an average age of around 16 years.

Type	Number at closure	Seats	Role	Spotter note
Boeing 737-300	12	148	Backbone of the fleet	The standard variant – seen in most photos
Boeing 737-500	2	131	Supplement for thinner routes	Noticeably shorter fuselage, so a rarer catch

The Boeing 737-300 was the workhorse: two CFM56 engines with the typically flattened nacelle undersides, room for 148 passengers in an all-economy layout. The Boeing 737-500 is the shortest Classic version; at bmibaby it offered 131 seats. The longer 737-400 was not part of the fleet toward the end. At peak times the fleet included more jets – in 2009 there were 17, before the airline shrank to 12 aircraft and later grew slightly again. All the aircraft were built by the US manufacturer Boeing.

A nice detail for photographers: several jets carried names with a pun on “baby.” If you have old close-ups of the nose, take a close look – the name is an additional feature for clearly assigning the photo to a specific aircraft.

737-300 or 737-500? How to tell them apart

On old photos the two variants are easy to confuse. Engines, cockpit, tail and paint are the same – the difference lies in the fuselage length.

At bmibaby in particular, the 737-500, with only two examples at the end, was the rarity. If you are unsure, the registration helps: through the British register you can look up the exact type for any G- registration. How that works is explained in the article on British G- registrations. The guide How to tell Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart gives an overview of all generations from Original to MAX.

How to recognize bmibaby

These features help you most when assigning old photos:

• Titles on the fuselage: the large “bmibaby.com” titles – the web address was deliberately part of the brand.
• Aircraft type: always a Boeing 737 Classic, almost always the -300, rarely the -500.
• Registration: British G-; many aircraft had previously flown for bmi British Midland.
• Codes: flight number with WW, ICAO code BMI in the log, “BABY” on the radio.
• Aircraft names: puns on “baby” on the nose.

Bases and network: from the Midlands to Europe

The history of the bases reflects the airline’s ups and downs. The rapid expansion of the early years was followed by a phase of downsizing from 2006.

Base	Period	Note
East Midlands	2002–2012	Home and headquarters, largest base in 2007 with nine 737s stationed
Cardiff	2002–2011	First outstation base, closed in October 2011
Manchester	2003–2011	Closed in October 2011
Durham Tees Valley	2003–2006	Abandoned because of insufficient demand
Birmingham	2005–2012	Second major base until the end
Belfast	until 2012	First Belfast International, from March 2012 Belfast City

bmibaby announced the closure of Cardiff and Manchester in April 2011. The freed-up capacity went to East Midlands, Birmingham and Belfast City. If you stood at the Runway Visitor Park in Manchester back then, you saw bmibaby jets only rarely from fall 2011.

The route network concentrated on typical vacation destinations: Spain with Málaga, Alicante and Palma de Mallorca, Portugal with Faro, plus destinations in France, Italy and Ireland. City connections were added, for example to Amsterdam, Paris and Geneva. These very city routes were among the first to be cut in summer 2012.

bmibaby in Germany

For spotters in Germany, bmibaby was never an everyday sight, but you could certainly find it. Two German airports were on the schedule:

• Cologne/Bonn: connection from East Midlands that ended in May 2012. From the observation deck at Cologne/Bonn Airport the 737 was easy to catch.
• Munich: from fall 2010 with flights from East Midlands and Cardiff. At the visitors’ hill at Munich Airport a bmibaby jet among the Lufthansa aircraft was a rare splash of color.

In addition, EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg also appeared in bmibaby’s route network. All of these routes are long gone. If you have photos from Cologne/Bonn, Munich or Basel, they are among the rare records of the airline outside Great Britain and southern Europe.

The end in September 2012

The fate of bmibaby was not decided at East Midlands but at the parent companies. At the end of 2011, Lufthansa and the International Airlines Group, which includes British Airways, agreed on the sale of bmi. For IAG the focus was on bmi’s takeoff and landing slots at London Heathrow. IAG did not want to take over the regional subsidiary and the budget offshoot; Lufthansa was allowed to sell both separately beforehand.

For bmibaby there was a non-binding agreement with a British company in February 2012. But the sale did not materialize before IAG took over bmi in April 2012. That meant bmibaby suddenly belonged to IAG. In early May 2012, IAG announced that no buyer had been found and proposed closing the airline by September 9, 2012.

After that, things moved quickly. From June 2012, numerous routes were dropped, including connections to Belfast, Amsterdam, Paris and Geneva. On September 9, 2012, the last flight arrived at East Midlands from Málaga – on exactly the route with which everything had begun ten years earlier. More than 800 jobs were lost, around 400 of them at the headquarters in Castle Donington.

The aircraft were then stored at Norwich and at Lasham airfield, among other places, and gradually returned to lessors, resold or scrapped. An overview of similar cases is given in the article Big airline collapses in Europe. Other British airlines from that era are now history as well, such as Monarch Airlines and Flybe. Today the market out of the Midlands is shared by other providers such as Jet2 and Ryanair.

Documenting old sightings properly

Photos of bmibaby are historical documents today. To keep them usable years from now, clean records are worth it. A good place for memories is the home airport: at the East Midlands Aeropark you had the airline’s 737s right in front of your lens for years – and anyone standing there today sees its successors in low-cost and cargo service in the same spot.

How to structure a logbook for the long term is shown in the guide Documenting sightings. For storing your image files, the article Archiving aircraft photos helps.

Common mix-ups

• Treating bmibaby as the same as bmi British Midland – the parent flew network service out of Heathrow and merged into British Airways in 2012.
• Confusing bmibaby with bmi regional – the regional subsidiary flew small Embraer jets and existed until 2019.
• Assigning the ICAO code BMI to the parent – BMI stood for bmibaby, while the parent flew with IATA code BD.
• Logging a 737-500 as a 737-300 – you can recognize the shorter variant by its stubby fuselage.
• Classifying later photos of the same registrations as bmibaby – after 2012 the jets flew for other operators.

Conclusion

For ten years, bmibaby was the budget airline from the Midlands: founded by British Midland as an answer to easyJet and Ryanair, equipped with Boeing 737s from its parent’s stock and heading to sun and city destinations across Europe. In the end the airline fell victim to big corporate politics – when bmi was sold to IAG, there was no place left for it. bmibaby has not existed since September 2012. All the more valuable are well-documented photos with registration, type, date and location.