British Midland (bmi) may struggle to raise the £95 million in funding it needs to keep flying because potential buyers for its Heathrow landing slots have become thin on the ground.

A number of the world’s leading airlines have expressed little or no interest in bmi’s fire sale, even though slots at the world’s busiest international airport have traded for tens of millions of dollars apiece in the past.

The Derby-based airline said this week that it needed to raise £190 million in additional funding by the end of October next year to survive.

Lufthansa, the German flag carrier, which took control of bmi this year, has pledged £95 million in loans. The remainder is to come from the sale or lease of landing slots.

Bmi, which employs 4,800 people, said that it was in “significantly advanced talks with several airlines” to sell slots. However, this has come as a surprise to many of the obvious buyers of those landing slots.

British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Emirates and several other Gulf carriers are not thought to be in talks with bmi over its slots. The American carriers are also understood to have little interest because they are trying to conserve cash. Analysts speculated that bmi may get interest from an Asian carrier, such as Air China, but only if the slots are sold at a bargain price.

In the airline’s most recent accounts, its directors warned that uncertainty over the slot sale cast doubt on the company’s ability to continue as a going concern next year. This has sparked fears about the future of the UK’s third-largest airline and Heathrow’s second-largest operator.

Andrew Fitchie, aviation analyst at Collins Stewart, said: “Bmi needs to be broken down into smaller bits because it is burning through so much cash. The outlook does not look good. It needs to sell some slots and focus on core routes.”

Bmi’s most valuable asset has been its 11 per cent of Heathrow landing slots. The airport has been so congested in the past that slots traded for huge sums of money. Continental Airlines paid $209 million for four pairs of slots two years ago, but today recession-hit carriers are cutting back rather than seeking to expand.

Bmi wrote down the value of its slots from £770 million to £616 million last year, although the value could now have fallen much further.

Lufthansa took control of bmi when Sir Michael Bishop, the former chairman, exercised an option to sell his controlling stake. The German carrier initially sought a buyer for bmi, but it did not attract a sufficiently high price. It has decided that bmi should restructure itself, bringing in Wolfgang Prock-Schauer as chief executive.

Airlines understood to have considered buying bmi include BA and Virgin. Sir Richard Branson’s airline even discussed a possible joint bid with Etihad, the Abu Dhabi carrier, but bmi’s financial difficulties put them off.

Mr Prock-Schauer has cut 25 per cent of staff at bmibaby, the airline’s low-cost operation. Bmibaby’s fleet of aircraft has also been cut from 17 to 12. Many bmi staff now expect the airline to start cutting back mainline operations, including flights to cities in the UK, the Middle East and Central Asia.

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