BMI Baby Review

Overall Rating

Three days before departure, bmibaby sent me an email informing me that I had to supply advance passenger information online before I fly or pay 5 GBP per leg at the airport. Fair enough, I thought, it's a budget airline, they try to make additional money from people who don't jump through their hoops. What followed went beyond that. I had flown on the AMS-BHX trajectory with bmibaby before, and online checkin was not possible in AMS, but this was a while ago and since I only had hand baggage, I went to the site to check if it was possible now. Apparently, it was, although I did not get that information by email. Apparently, they contracted the ground handling to aviapartner, to whose site I was redirected, but I could not check in online because the site claimed that it did not know the flight WW1012 I flew on. I tried several times over a period of 24 hours, but got the same message. Gotten somewhat suspicious, I took a screenshot of the error message and printed it (it didn't work any other way because the error message appeared in a modal dialog, from which you can't print), but thought they just hadn't set up the checkin system right.
At the checkin counter: "You know you have to pay 13 euros, right?" -- "No, why?" -- "Because you haven't checked in online" (it's apparently in the fineprint, but certainly not in any of the email messages I got from bmibaby)
"I actually tried, but the website doesn't work" -- "I'm sorry, but I have to take the 13 euros nevertheless. Even if you had proof that the website was broken. You can write a letter to complain after the flight" -- "No, it wasn't my fault that your website is broken, it's ridiculous that I should give you money for it and maybe never get it back" -- "I'm sorry, but I can't let you board if you don't pay the 13 euros" -- "You do realize this is extortion and illegal, right?" -- "Maybe so, but these are the rules" -- "Let's discuss this with you manager" -- "I don't have a manager. We're all managers".
At this point, the lady at the next counter joined our discussion and asked me to step over to her counter. I had already overheard that exactly the same discussion was going on at all the other counters, so she knew what this was about. After some more discussion, it finally turned out that the printout of the failed checkin attempt was acceptable, and I didn't pay the 13 euros. Everybody around me had to, though.

In my opinion, bmibaby didn't register their flight with aviapartner on purpose to collect those 13 euros. It had transpired that noone had managed to check in online for this flight. It was apparent that the checkin-counter employees knew full well what was going on, and that it was illegal, but they were forced to do it.

I won't go on in detail, but the rest was similarly disagreeable: 5 minutes time between gate announcement and "gate closing", and you had to go through security during that time. On the flight back, they again collected money for "oversize" hand-baggage at the gate: at bmibaby, the maximum size (55x40x20cm) is smaller than at other companies, so that the standard carry-on trolley suitcase won't fit. Of course, you have to read the fineprint and know the usual sizes to realize this (I checked afterwards).