"Bruce" wrote in message


If the leases are not transferred on sale, Lufthansa will rightly
expect a higher price for bmibaby to compensate for the retained
liability of all those leases.

But why would anyone pay any significant amount for bmibaby? Its brand
is worthless and it has no significant assets (such as the valuable
Heathrow slots and more modern aircraft owned by bmi mainline). Any
airline wanting to expand on to its routes is free to do so, and could
probably do it more efficiently than by buying a failing small airline.

It's far more likely that Lufthansa either has to pay someone to take it
away, or just shuts it down. And at least Lufthansa does still operate
similar, but larger, 737-300 and 737-500 fleets. In fact, Lufthansa's
737-300s are on average significantly older than bmi's, so it could
probably use the bmibaby fleet to *upgrade* its own fleet (the oldest
Lufthansa 737 is five years older than the oldest bmibaby one). My
experience of Lufthansa's planes is that they can be very tatty indeed,
so the bmibaby ones may actually be in better condition, too.