Extension to codeshare agreement means more choice to more USA destinations

bmi british midland is celebrating a year of serving the USA direct from Manchester Airport. Direct services have been operating to Washington Dulles and Chicago O Hare Airports for a year in May and June respectively.

The double celebration has been marked with a boost to onward connections in the States with United Airlines. The codeshare agreement now ensures that bmi passengers can travel onwards to sixteen destinations from Washington and 25 destinations from Chicago. Six brand new destinations, which are to be added from Washington are, Atlanta and San Jose from June and Dallas, Las Vegas, Portland and San Diego from July. Five destinations, which are to be added from Chicago from July are, Des Moines, Orlando, Omaha, Sacramento and Saint Louis.

Austin Reid, chief executive officer, bmi british midland said:

“The transatlantic routes have proved a popular addition to the bmi british midland network. The news that after only a year even more codeshare destinations with United Airlines have come into operation can only be good for our customers.

“We would now obviously welcome the opportunity to operate a transatlantic service from London Heathrow to provide travellers with even more competitively priced travel to the USA.”

Despite the extremely challenging conditions that coincided with the launch of services to Washington and Chicago from Manchester, bmi remains committed to its transatlantic services. Passenger numbers are encouraging with figures topping 180,000 on the two routes and both routes have enjoyed recent load factors of 70%.

The airline has a strong base from which to move forward and continues to evaluate additional services from Manchester. However, the airline strongly believes that more could be delivered to the North West if it was allowed to complement Manchester routes by also providing Heathrow - US services.

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