Why don't London Midland serve Manchester?

[johnnychips]

Although anyone living in the East or West Midlands, wouldn't pickup Manchester Airport out of choice, they would naturally fly from Birmingham or East Midlands Airport.

Manchester serves more destinations, though Birmingham has an impressive choice as well. Birmingham Airport involves a change of train from the East Midlands, though I realise from a lot of places, Manchester involves two changes.

Also there are surprising variations in prices and availability of flights and packages that make a journey to a non-local airport worthwhile, even if the local airport also serves the destination.

 

[frodshamfella]

Whilst I get your point I can see why some would want a link to Manchester. Do Birmingham or East Midlands have as frequent links by Emirates, Qatar, Etihad, PIA, Saudia, Cathay, Singapore, Air Canada, Air Transat, Belavia, Delta, American, Hainan, Finnair, Icelandair, Shaheen, United and Virgin?

Birmingham has flights with Emirates, Air India, Air Transat, Icelandair, PIA, Qatar, United, Turkmenistan, Hainan and many more, your pretty well covered worldwide from Birmingham. East Midlands is fine for European destinations. Some from the Midlands going long haul might go up to Manchester, but there more likely to go to Heathrow with even greater choice of long haul flights and lower fares.

I have a friend who lives in Stone, she is normally going to the Med, her first choice is East Midlands, then Birmingham, then Liverpool/Manchester.

 

[KTHV]

Manchester serves more destinations, though Birmingham has an impressive choice as well. Birmingham Airport involves a change of train from the East Midlands, though I realise from a lot of places, Manchester involves two changes.

Also there are surprising variations in prices and availability of flights and packages that make a journey to a non-local airport worthwhile, even if the local airport also serves the destination.

Although I live in the West Midlands - my usual airports I use are Stansted, Gatwick, Heathrow and Bristol.

Have flown via Manchester and Liverpool a few times - and hardly ever use EMA or BHX

 

[A0]

TfGM's Local Rail Service Update, dated 13 Oct 2016, has a section about the West Midlands ITT, including the following:


If this service were to terminate at the Airport in addition to all the Northern and TPE services from the Manchester direction, I should think Airport platform occupancy might become problematic. From Dec 2017 there will no longer be any paths for services from the Airport to terminate at Piccadilly, but maybe the West Midlands service could be combined with one of the Northern or TPE services from the Airport to points beyond Manchester, and operated jointly?

If they're going to take the Crewe stoppers away from the Stoke line, perhaps they could send them back via Northampton, which lost out last time LM reshuffled the routes? The journey time from Crewe to London would be pretty much unchanged.

Otherwise it means getting to places like Stoke from Northampton will mean either 3 trains - change at Rugby and Stafford, or a much longer journey via Birmingham or massive cost increase to go via MKC.

 

[fowler9]

Birmingham has flights with Emirates, Air India, Air Transat, Icelandair, PIA, Qatar, United, Turkmenistan, Hainan and many more, your pretty well covered worldwide from Birmingham. East Midlands is fine for European destinations. Some from the Midlands going long haul might go up to Manchester, but there more likely to go to Heathrow with even greater choice of long haul flights and lower fares.

I have a friend who lives in Stone, she is normally going to the Med, her first choice is East Midlands, then Birmingham, then Liverpool/Manchester.

Sorry mate, I didn't mean to appear to be knocking Birmingham or East Midlands. Just that Manchester has more seats due to more flights. What am I saying, I am a scouser. I'm biting my tongue from now on. Ha ha.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

Sorry mate, I didn't mean to appear to be knocking Birmingham or East Midlands. Just that Manchester has more seats due to more flights. What am I saying, I am a scouser. I'm biting my tongue from now on. Ha ha.

Don't worry about it. JLA will continue to be a better bet than Ringway for places like Poland, Hungary, Romania, etc.

 

[fowler9]

Don't worry about it. JLA will continue to be a better bet than Ringway for places like Poland, Hungary, Romania, etc.

Was interested to see Blue Air are going to base a plane here in its own special scouse colour scheme. Ha ha. JLA is handy for me because I can be there in 20 mins on the bus from my house. Next trip is Warsaw at the end of November. Been there before but always happy to go again. Don't mind making the trek to Manchester for long haul flights which I don't make very often to be honest. Actually getting to Birmingham wouldn't be much harder if the price was right.

 

[class26]

Birmingham has flights with Emirates, Air India, Air Transat, Icelandair, PIA, Qatar, United, Turkmenistan, Hainan and many more, your pretty well covered worldwide from Birmingham. East Midlands is fine for European destinations. Some from the Midlands going long haul might go up to Manchester, but there more likely to go to Heathrow with even greater choice of long haul flights and lower fares.

I have a friend who lives in Stone, she is normally going to the Med, her first choice is East Midlands, then Birmingham, then Liverpool/Manchester.

East Midlands is most definitely NOT fine for Europe. It has not one single scheduled carrier, just the low cost boys who fly to most destinations twice a week. That is honestly next to useless for the business traveller. Living in Lincolnshire I have lost count of how many times I have driven past EMA en route to Birmingham airport when flying virtually anywhere. My last trip was domestic, to Belfast and even then EMA could offer flights when i wanted them without wasting hours and hours of my time. I had meeting in Belfast at 18.00 and the best EMA could do was get me there at approx 09.30 am. From BHX I had the choice of almost hourly flights so could tailor work around them

 

[frodshamfella]

East Midlands is most definitely NOT fine for Europe. It has not one single scheduled carrier, just the low cost boys who fly to most destinations twice a week. That is honestly next to useless for the business traveller. Living in Lincolnshire I have lost count of how many times I have driven past EMA en route to Birmingham airport when flying virtually anywhere. My last trip was domestic, to Belfast and even then EMA could offer flights when i wanted them without wasting hours and hours of my time. I had meeting in Belfast at 18.00 and the best EMA could do was get me there at approx 09.30 am. From BHX I had the choice of almost hourly flights so could tailor work around them

The low cost carriers are all scheduled, I was really referring to leisure destination which EMA serves, it has never had the same network of business destinations as Birmingham.
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Don't worry about it. JLA will continue to be a better bet than Ringway for places like Poland, Hungary, Romania, etc.

I use John Lennon as my first choice, just much easier to use, and I will be on Blue Air's new routes from Liverpool, starting with Hamburg.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Shall we be mindful that the thread actually covers London Midland and prospective RAIL services to Manchester and that AIRLINE discussions are somewhat off-thread.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Don't worry about it. JLA will continue to be a better bet than Ringway for places like Poland, Hungary, Romania, etc.

Now that is a business I can't see surviving Brexit, if the hard folk get their way.
Sorry getting off topic.

Funny how there are never enough platforms at Manchester Airport, however many you add.

 

[PR1Berske]

By December 2017, could the West Midlands franchise holder have the space at Manchester Airport because of a failure to agree how to fit a Welsh/Wales and Borders service there? I'm not up to date with the Wales franchise situation, but wonder if in a fight for platform space it would be Birmingham over North Wales winning out?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Funny how there are never enough platforms at Manchester Airport, however many you add.

Would the HS2 Manchester Airport station help in matters such as that?

 

[frodshamfella]

Shall we be mindful that the thread actually covers London Midland and prospective RAIL services to Manchester and that AIRLINE discussions are somewhat off-thread.

There is a rail service from Birmingham to Manchester already , it's probably sufficient.

 

[PR1Berske]

Would the HS2 Manchester Airport station help in matters such as that?

That station exists only in pencil sketches and ring-binders, it might never be built to help a single man!

 

[plastictaffy]

LM can only just provide trains and crews for the service they run now!!!

 

[D1009]

There is a rail service from Birmingham to Manchester already , it's probably sufficient.

No it isn't, more seats per hour are currently offered between Birmingham and Liverpool.

 

[Harbornite]

Shall we be mindful that the thread actually covers London Midland and prospective RAIL services to Manchester and that AIRLINE discussions are somewhat off-thread.

It's not completely irrelevant, the provision of services is related to the locations of airports.

 

[Bletchleyite]

No it isn't, more seats per hour are currently offered between Birmingham and Liverpool.

Does that matter? The question is more whether those seats are full or not.

 

[D1009]

Does that matter? The question is more whether those seats are full or not.

Well I would have expected there to be more demand between Birmingham and Manchester than between Birmingham and Liverpool, and this has been borne out my my experience of using the two services. I have seen many Voyagers leaving Birmingham for Manchester full and standing even at off peak times, and I avoid them if going to Wolverhampton for example.

 

[Greybeard33]

Does that matter? The question is more whether those seats are full or not.

Do you really believe that 430 Standard Class seats per hour (one 4-car and one 5-car Voyager) is adequate for the only direct service between England's second and third largest cities? I doubt that the people jammed in the aisles and vestibules in the peaks would agree.

 

[Bletchleyite]

So XC need longer trains. This isn't news.


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[LNW-GW Joint]

Well I would have expected there to be more demand between Birmingham and Manchester than between Birmingham and Liverpool, and this has been borne out my my experience of using the two services. I have seen many Voyagers leaving Birmingham for Manchester full and standing even at off peak times, and I avoid them if going to Wolverhampton for example.

The difference between the Birmingham-Manchester and Birmingham-Liverpool services is that many of the "Liverpool" passengers change at Crewe for other routes.
The Manchester passengers tend to stay on all the way.
Crewe-Liverpool can be very quiet.
3tph Stafford-Liverpool is a weird service too (with none to Preston/Chester or beyond).

 

[Jamesrob637]

London Midland would be a great alternative to Virgin on the Manchester to London route. Even if it took an hour more, if fares were half the price (£40-50 off peak return rather than £80 plus) it'd attract a significant amount of demand

 

[D1009]

So XC need longer trains. This isn't news.

I was answering your direct question as to whether the seats were full or not. However if the proposal is for an LM service from Birmingham to Manchester via Stoke, Crewe AND the Airport I don't think it will alleviate the situation as it will be far too slow.

 

[ys123]

London Midland would be a great alternative to Virgin on the Manchester to London route. Even if it took an hour more, if fares were half the price (£40-50 off peak return rather than £80 plus) it'd attract a significant amount of demand

Fully agree. Currently it's available if one changes at stoke (and buys separate tickets) - same platform and 17min wait. Advance starts from £12 (£3 Manchester to Stoke + £9 Stoke to London) . Super off peak return is £42.10 and off peak return is £52.10 again buying separate tickets.

If London Midland were to start going from manchester to London it should go Manchester Piccadilly-Airport-Crewe-London. This will give the airport a direct link to London and it'll give London Midland more income than going Manchester-Stoke-London because Manchester to stoke already has 5 trains an hour and Stoke to London already has a London Midland every hour so it'll mainly be for Manchester-London guys who are looking to save a few bucks by taking a 3.5hr journey. Can't see that happening. Whereas Manchester piccadilly-Airport-Crewe-London will open up new direct routes.
Manchester airport to:
London
Stafford
Tamworth
Litchfield Trent valley
Milton Keynes central
Rugby
Nuneaton

 

[Greybeard33]

So XC need longer trains. This isn't news.

But is the most efficient way to provide adequate capacity between Manchester and Birmingham (a wholly electrified route) for XC to run lots more diesel carriages half empty between Birmingham and Bournemouth/Bristol?

 

[Bletchleyite]

But is the most efficient way to provide adequate capacity between Manchester and Birmingham (a wholly electrified route) for XC to run lots more diesel carriages half empty between Birmingham and Bournemouth/Bristol?

Where are these half empty XC services?


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[frodshamfella]

The difference between the Birmingham-Manchester and Birmingham-Liverpool services is that many of the "Liverpool" passengers change at Crewe for other routes.
The Manchester passengers tend to stay on all the way.
Crewe-Liverpool can be very quiet.
3tph Stafford-Liverpool is a weird service too (with none to Preston/Chester or beyond).

Sorry thats wrong, if many get off at Crewe off the Birmingham-Liverpool, just as many get on again. I get on at Acton Bridge, the train is generally busy, standing is quite common, Saturdays in particular. Its only a four carriage service after all.
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Well I would have expected there to be more demand between Birmingham and Manchester than between Birmingham and Liverpool, and this has been borne out my my experience of using the two services. I have seen many Voyagers leaving Birmingham for Manchester full and standing even at off peak times, and I avoid them if going to Wolverhampton for example.

My experience of using LM service out of New Street as far as Acton Bridge, is a very well used service, full on departure, remaining so for my journey.

 

[ivanhoe]

East Midlands is most definitely NOT fine for Europe. It has not one single scheduled carrier, just the low cost boys who fly to most destinations twice a week. That is honestly next to useless for the business traveller. Living in Lincolnshire I have lost count of how many times I have driven past EMA en route to Birmingham airport when flying virtually anywhere. My last trip was domestic, to Belfast and even then EMA could offer flights when i wanted them without wasting hours and hours of my time. I had meeting in Belfast at 18.00 and the best EMA could do was get me there at approx 09.30 am. From BHX I had the choice of almost hourly flights so could tailor work around them

EMA has never pretended to be other than what it is. For the many of us, it provides a convenient way of getting to holiday destinations and provides some business travellers flights to Glasgow, Edinburgh Belfast Dublin and Brussels. It is complimentary to Birmingham but gives a large area of the region from South Yorks to Market Harborough an alternative to using Brum which indeed is a fine airport.
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The difference between the Birmingham-Manchester and Birmingham-Liverpool services is that many of the "Liverpool" passengers change at Crewe for other routes.
The Manchester passengers tend to stay on all the way.
Crewe-Liverpool can be very quiet.
3tph Stafford-Liverpool is a weird service too (with none to Preston/Chester or beyond).

Can you substantiate your comments or is it just gut feeling. I'd say it's a well used service and Crewe will always be a major junction to both alight and board.