BMI recently announced that it may be cutting 600 jobs and closing its final salary pension scheme to about 1,000 existing members, in an attempt to survive the recession.

When Lufthansa bought earlier this year BMI Airline, they didn’t take into account that the company may be facing such major problems. The airline has a permanent of 4,500 workforce and it’s fighting to survive since is forced to shutdown seven services operating out of Europe and nine aircraft from its fleet of 39 planes.

Flights from Heathrow to Brussels, Tel Aviv, Kiev and Aleppo will be suspended in January. The service from Heathrow to Amsterdam will be also suspended in March 2010. Seasonal services from Heathrow to Palma and Venice will not be reinstated next summer. BMI will continue to offer services from London to Brussels through an arrangement made possible with Brussels Airlines.

Airline analysts believe it could lose as much as £200m this year.

It’s pretty much obvious, that at least for now, BMI has postponed its plans of expanding and entering more markets, blaming the economic slowdown for its problems.

BMI is the second largest airline at London Heathrow, one of the world’s busiest and best-connected international airports. From the Heathrow hub BMI operates services in the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. Former known as British Midland, it was rebranded bmi British Midland in 2001, which was subsequently shortened to bmi two years later. In 2002, bmibaby, a low-cost subsidiary with its own unique brand, was launched.