Low cost airline, Bmi has revealed its plans to start operating services between the UK and US in the year 2009 and not as soon as the Open Skies agreement comes into effect in March next year, according to Bloomberg. This is surely a welcome news for passengers using services of BMI inside Europe, and now they can plan to travel up to US with BMI.

Under the agreement between the UK and US the low-cost carrier, which is Britain's third biggest airline, has the chance to start services from London Heathrow to the US in April next year. The flight schedule will be finalized once the agreement is signed.

Referring a need to assess levels of both demand and competition, the chief executive of the airline, Mr. Nigel Turner, revealed to an industry conference in London that the airline would delay the introduction of any routes from UK to US until 2009,.

Mr. Turner said, "We're not going to jump in April. We're going to postpone our entry into the market until 2009".

While it has not yet revealed plans for its own service from UK to US, bmi is set to start operating US-bound flights from London Heathrow from 30th March, 2008 as part of a code-sharing deal with United Airlines.

With the new service, travellers will be able to make their journeys from Heathrow to Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Washington and San Francisco.