Advance tickets and airports - how should it work?

[redreni]

So... flying into Heathrow, I'm being forced to pay for a train ticket to Slough? Or does Staines count? Thanks, either way...

No, London. Probably a single to Underground Zones 1-6 by default, but zero-excessable for a single to any named National Rail station in zones 1-6 if desired. Or excessable to a ticket to anywhere on payment of the difference in fare. Slough is cheaper so the excess would be zero. Staines ... see below.

I'm quite happy to pay my £3 for the Flightline 730 to Frimley (when it's running).

And if they ever get the Southern Link to Woking built, I'll maybe use that...

Okay, happy to take your Frimley example. Maybe not typical, but happy to take it. I used to live in Slough so am well aware that, even after Heathrow Connect started running giving an opportunity to reach Heathrow by rail without going in and out of Paddington, the bus remained by far the quicker option for many people. There will be a small minority of passengers arriving at Heathrow who just want a bus to a local destination.

Heathrow being as big and complex as it is, however, the arrangements for this airport would have to be thought about quite carefully. As well as the local West London/East Berks/West Surrey/South Bucks bus demand, there's also lots of people who are best off making a mixed-mode journey via a bus to Feltham or Ashford (Surrey).

Also, National Express has always done good business from Heathrow, partly because in addition to the price-conscious passenger, it also attracts those who strongly prefer the simplest possible journey with the fewest changes.

So, what of the people wanting to use those options?

For a start, I would make the default Heathrow Rail to Zones 1-6 ticket exchangeable on payment of an excess not only for a ticket from Heathrow Rail to anywhere, but alternatively for a ticket from Heathrow Bus to anywhere, which would enable journeys starting on local buses to Feltham or any of the RailAir bus links.

Frimley only seems to have fares from Heathrow Bus priced as route via Woking RailAir, which would probably involve an excess fare if you wanted to exchange your train ticket for one of those. Maybe, as an added bit of flexibility, the default Heathrow to London ticket should be exchangeable for a ticket from Feltham to anywhere. In that case, you should be able to get a ticket Feltham to Frimley for a zero excess. If you prefer to pay for the direct bus, that's a matter for you.

If anyone wants to make a journey still not covered, to be honest, if we're talking about a £3 bus fare, I'm tempted to say it's tough. If people write in complaining they had to pay again for public transport despite having already paid the public transport tax on their plane ticket, and they can evidence that they did something sensible that the ticket they were issued with didn't cover and couldn't be exchanged for or put towards, then send them a £5 Costa voucher or something. The policy doesn't have to be an improvement in every single use case to be sensible and beneficial overall.

 

[NCT]

So now we have a bunch of disunited statists arguing my way or the highway ...

 

[Dirty_Mac]

How many people are making a long-distance train journey to catch a flight from those airports? Birmingham maybe, but I can't imagine many people are using Southampton or Liverpool airports who don't live within the radius where advance tickets shouldn't apply.

I went from Liverpool airport to North Wales before

 

[tbtc]

A comparison of reliability would be interesting, irrespective of personal bias.

Certainly, my recent attempts at using the North Downs Line to meet, or return from, flights from/to Gatwick have given me a bias that is the polar opposite of yours!

I'm not saying that heavy rail is amazingly reliable - of course not when we're spending a nine figure sum to compensate passengers for delays each year

(Imagine if we didn't have to spend this money this way and had a billion pounds a year to reduce fares or build new trains or open new lines or...)

The problem is that this thread seemed to be a discussion of "what steps the railway should take to subside any flight delays"

However it how seems to have partly moved on to "the railway should provide free train travel to anyone heading towards an airport" etc

These are Air problems that need to be dealt with by airlines/ airports. The rail budget has more than enough problems to solve already.

 

[redreni]

I'm not saying that heavy rail is amazingly reliable - of course not when we're spending a nine figure sum to compensate passengers for delays each year

(Imagine if we didn't have to spend this money this way and had a billion pounds a year to reduce fares or build new trains or open new lines or...)

The problem is that this thread seemed to be a discussion of "what steps the railway should take to subside any flight delays"

However it how seems to have partly moved on to "the railway should provide free train travel to anyone heading towards an airport" etc

I can't speak for anybody else, but I share that concern, which is why I am not proposing that.

These are Air problems that need to be dealt with by airlines/ airports. The rail budget has more than enough problems to solve already.

Quite. That's why my proposal would be to make travel to and from an airport connecting on or off a flight cheaper by making every airline passenger pay their fair share of the cost of providing it, whether they use it or not. No freebies.

As to the other proposals along the lines of making Advances more flexible if connecting on and off a flight, TOCs would of course be free to set the Advance quotas at zero if they didn't want to offer cheaper fares on more permissive terms. The business model of setting traps for people - many of whom will be infrequent rail users - then fleecing them when they break the rules, is hardly reputable and not even legitimate imho.

 

[Farnborough]

That's why my proposal would be to make travel to and from an airport connecting on or off a flight cheaper by making every airline passenger pay their fair share of the cost of providing it, whether they use it or not.

This is where we have to disagree... an airline passenger's "fair share" of anything unconnected with their flight is £zero

 

[redreni]

This is where we have to disagree... an airline passenger's "fair share" of anything unconnected with their flight is £zero

An airline passenger's journey to and from the airport is not unconnected with their flight.

 

[supervc-10]

But if you lived in Hatton Cross and were flying from Heathrow, or Wythenshawe flying out of Manchester, or even the area near Liverpool airport that's so close to the airport you can walk to the terminal - why should your fare be hiked by the cost of a train/bus into the city centre?

We need no change for services like the Piccadilly Line, the Elizabeth Line, the train services from Manchester into Piccadilly etc. The only ones that need to change would be availability of advance tickets to/from airports from points far away. The TPE services in/out of Manchester Airport would be a great example.

If you lived in, say, Lockerbie and wanted to fly somewhere, then the direct train to MAN would be very useful. But what if your flight home is delayed? Maybe TPE could sell you a fixed ticket Lockerbie-Manchester Airport with the same advance restrictions as today, and then a semi-flexible ticket on the return. EG if your plane is due to arrive at 2pm, and trains north leave at half past the hour, then you could have the ticket valid on any train from the 14:30 onwards that day. It would be even better if a cross-operator advance system could be worked out. For example if someone lived in Salisbury and is flying out of Gatwick - that's an easy train with one change at Clapham Jct, but it's across South Western and Southern.

The idea of Advance tickets is to encourage travel on less busy trains. But currently with air travel it can be a bit of a minefield. If you priced the return semi-flexible portion partway between the advance fares and the walk-up fares, it would still encourage people to take the train more so than today. And the vast majority of people would be on the train they had already booked.

 

[redreni]

But if you lived in Hatton Cross and were flying from Heathrow, or Wythenshawe flying out of Manchester, or even the area near Liverpool airport that's so close to the airport you can walk to the terminal - why should your fare be hiked by the cost of a train/bus into the city centre?

Because they know that precept on air fares goes to measures to stop people driving to the airport and thus improve local air quality where they live.

Ignoring that these people are tiny in number, so it would be irrational to organise anything around them, they get wrapped helically around an inclined plane by my policy, to the tune of a few pounds, just on the two days a year they're going on holiday or coming home from holiday (if and only if they fly from their local airport), but they are among the primary beneficiaries on every other day of the year.

 

[agk2126]

An airline passenger's journey to and from the airport is not unconnected with their flight.

Not unconnected, I agree, but not automatically connected either. We have identified enough exceptions (people who already live or work near the airport, people split ticketing flights without leaving the airport, or people originating or heading somewhere genuinely inaccessible by rail or public transport) to call the policy into question, even if it would probably apply to most passengers at a given airport.

If you're flying that frequently, surely you'd buy an annual policy?

Not necessarily. Annual travel insurance policies generous enough to cover, for example, disrupted onward segments (for example, a missed train following a delayed flight) are quite expensive. More expensive, over time, than the total cost of self-insuring against such situations.

Do you have the funds to pay for medical repatriation which might cost twenty grand or more?

No, I do not.

I do, however, have the funds to buy myself an Anytime Single the few times per year a flight causes me to miss the train for which I hold an Advance Single.

Part of how I retain these funds is that I don't buy extensive (and expensive!) travel insurance policies. In the scope of this airport/railway discussion I suspect medical repatriation is a bit out of scope. That seems like an entirely valid but separate travel insurance decision, not related to the dilemma of rail ticket flexibility after landing at an airport.

(In my case, I also buy flights on a credit card that covers medical repatriation.)

I think that is a poor choice, personally

And I entirely respect your opinion. I hope you respect mine as well! As you just said, it's a personal preference. A decision which depends on people's own tolerances for adversity and uncertainty, cash flows, symmetry of information, and, if using the same insurer, and claims history (which translates to underwriting risk, which in turn translates to cost).

There is no such thing as "free" - someone has to pay for it

Yes. It's slightly more nuanced, however, if an Advance ticket had originally been available, at the same price, on both of the trains in question, and the passenger only ended up on the second one after missing the first because of a disrupted flight. In a sense, you are correct (i.e. the railway has to "pay" the opportunity cost, the foregone revenue of another Anytime ticket) but that is less direct.

as the railway would know which ticket holders were to be regarded as officially connecting from or to a flight

requiring putting in your flight number a bit like with rental cars

Yes! I forgot how this worked with rental cars, but that's exactly the same idea. Surely the railways can replicate it if required to.

 

[redreni]

Not unconnected, I agree, but not automatically connected either.

Really?

We have identified enough exceptions

Surely the persuasiveness of the exceptions as an argument against the policy doesn't just depend how many exceptions we can think of, but also on how common they are (I suggest all these are going to be pretty rare) and the severity of any unintended negative impact on those people (negligible under my proposal).

people who already live or work near the airport

Well, as I say, I honestly believe people living near the airport would be rejoicing if my proposal were implemented. And, depending on the detail of how this is implemented, anyone working near the airport and wanting to take a flight after work, might well get a free journey to work on the morning of the day of their evening flight.

people split ticketing flights without leaving the airport

Tax them! They contribute nothing. If they don't want to pay the tax, let them transit through somewhere else. I don't regard catching those people with this charge as a negative at all: we can get them to pay to build, maintain and operate our airport transport links.

people originating or heading somewhere genuinely inaccessible by rail or public transport.

Well, they're going to continue to drive ultimately, for part of their journey at least, but the point of the policy is to tax people who drive to airports. The parking footprint and local air quality around our major airports is a disgrace. And who knows, maybe if they're fyling into Heathrow but heading for a cottage in rural Norfolk, for instance, maybe this will nudge them to go into London and spend a bit of money before travelling on, rather than driving out of Heathrow and snarling up the M25?

A lot of the things on your list are not problems, they're examples of people whose behaviour you'd want to change, or else tax.

The idea isn't necessarily to let everybody continue to do everything they can do now as cheaply as possible.

 

[agk2126]

The idea isn't necessarily to let everybody continue to do everything they can do now as cheaply as possible.

Agree entirely. My general idea is to let as many people as possible do as much as they want as cheaply as possible, but with awareness of market failures, tragedies of the commons, collective action dilemmas, etc. Taxes are a powerful tool to nudge people towards acting in ways that are optimal for society, while still allowing them to behave otherwise by paying a bit more to the state.

Tax them! They contribute nothing. If they don't want to pay the tax, let them transit through somewhere else. I don't regard catching those people with this charge as a negative at all: we can get them to pay to build, maintain and operate our airport transport links.

Fair enough. I don't have a huge problem in theory with collecting some tax revenue from people who fly in and out without leaving the airport. Genuine connecting flights would be exempt from this, I assume, if neither the ticketed origin nor destination is the city in question.

Surely the persuasiveness of the exceptions as an argument against the policy doesn't just depend how many exceptions we can think of, but also on how common they are (I suggest all these are going to be pretty rare) and the severity of any unintended negative impact on those people (negligible under my proposal).

I agree that it includes a combination, as you said, of the number (i.e. different types) of exceptions and the frequency of them. I also think the persuasiveness of the exceptions depends on whether they'd be experienced in a particularly frustrating or perverse way, as occurs when a critical mass of people (even if a minority) are forced to buy services (at any price) that are completely unusable for them.

One can also picture, for example, passengers with mobility or medical constraints who would love to ride public transport but can't feasibly, or whose scheduled flights arrive or depart outside of the operating hours of the public transport link, or who experience irregular operations (diversions, voluntary rerouting), large groups, or who show up with heavy, awkward, or regulated luggage they can't practically (or in some cases legally) carry on public transport.

they're examples of people whose behaviour you'd want to change, or else tax.

As I indicated above, I'm cautiously sympathetic to Pigouvian taxes, while remaining aware of how quickly universality can generate unfairness when imposed on a diverse population with such heterogeneous needs. Mandatory bundling of airport public transport tickets with plane tickets sounds persuasive in this thread, and feels quite elegant at the policy level. Not sure it scales effectively enough to the human level.

 

[Llanigraham]

Quite. That's why my proposal would be to make travel to and from an airport connecting on or off a flight cheaper by making every airline passenger pay their fair share of the cost of providing it, whether they use it or not. No freebies.

So what would happen if the flight is when there are no trains at a suitable time?
I can think of plenty of airports you could get to by train which have flights outside of the train timetable.

 

[NCT]

Without reinventing the wheel, how to SNCF or DB do it with their CDG or Frankfurt Airport connections?

 

[supervc-10]

Because they know that precept on air fares goes to measures to stop people driving to the airport and thus improve local air quality where they live.

Ignoring that these people are tiny in number, so it would be irrational to organise anything around them, they get wrapped helically around an inclined plane by my policy, to the tune of a few pounds, just on the two days a year they're going on holiday or coming home from holiday (if and only if they fly from their local airport), but they are among the primary beneficiaries on every other day of the year.

But you don't need to roll in local bus/train tickets to the plane ticket to do that. The £5 drop off charge is already dissuading people already. And making sure that public transport in general is affordable and practical is the most important thing IMO, regardless of whether that's to/from and airport or not.

The problem is not people not using public transport for short journeys from the airport to the city it ostensibly serves. Most major airports have pretty decent connections by rail or bus, and except when travelling with large amounts of baggage, or for people with mobility options, those are the primary options from the city centre.

The problem is that many people don't live near a major airport, or their local airport doesn't have flights to where they want to go. I used to take the train down to London for flights to Chicago, for example, when I lived in Manchester. If you're travelling a long way to make a long-haul flight, or live somewhere with no nearby major airports, then the rigidity of current advance ticketing adds to the stress and costs of travel.

 

[agk2126]

Without reinventing the wheel, how to SNCF or DB do it with their CDG or Frankfurt Airport connections?

Expensively! At least SNCF through their AccesRail Train + Air combo with protected air and rail connections.

In contrast, an inflexible Ouigo Essential ticket (the French analogue of Advance Single) to another French city from the Lyon or Paris airports is very cheap (often 10€) but if passengers miss the train, they need to pay for an expensive last minute ticket.

 

[redreni]

But you don't need to roll in local bus/train tickets to the plane ticket to do that. The £5 drop off charge is already dissuading people already. And making sure that public transport in general is affordable and practical is the most important thing IMO, regardless of whether that's to/from and airport or not.

The problem is not people not using public transport for short journeys from the airport to the city it ostensibly serves. Most major airports have pretty decent connections by rail or bus, and except when travelling with large amounts of baggage, or for people with mobility options, those are the primary options from the city centre.

The problem is that many people don't live near a major airport, or their local airport doesn't have flights to where they want to go. I used to take the train down to London for flights to Chicago, for example, when I lived in Manchester. If you're travelling a long way to make a long-haul flight, or live somewhere with no nearby major airports, then the rigidity of current advance ticketing adds to the stress and costs of travel.

Agree with most of this.

The trouble with the £5 drop-off fee for people who would use the M25 if travelling by car, but would go via zone 1 if taking the train, is that for a family of 4, the premium that is added to the one-way public transport fare (not even the fare, just the premium that pays the track access charge for using the rail tunnel), is considerably more than the drop-off charge.

That drop-off charge is, in my view, tokenostic at best. Particularly as you can drop off in the long-stay car park for nothing. But even if people don't know that or prefer the convenience of being dropped off at the terminal, all the drop-off charge is going to nudge them to do is look at the public transport option. At which point they see the fares and conclude it would be better to pay the £5.

 

[al78]

I agree and airlines should also be responsible for ensuring people can get home if their return flight is delayed. If we arrive too late for the train or bus and can't get home, the airline should pay for a taxi or hotel. Compensation should begin at a 1 hour delay too. If that means the end of cheap flights, so be it. Passenger rights in airports are rubbish!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Jan 2026 ==


I wish people understood this when they demand free parking in their local high street!

I doubt it, they will likely moan about how busy the roads are. It is like Horsham, people complain about the cost of parking yet they all like to drive one car each into the town, even though the town is three miles wide at most and anyone with even mediocre fitness or better could cycle into the centre from the outskirts in 15-20 minutes at most. Instead, we have a market town that was really nice when I moved here just over 20 years ago, but has now turned into a clone of every other traffic choked urban area in the UK.

 

[redreni]

Fair enough. I don't have a huge problem in theory with collecting some tax revenue from people who fly in and out without leaving the airport. Genuine connecting flights would be exempt from this, I assume, if neither the ticketed origin nor destination is the city in question.

I don't feel strongly about it if somebody is flying to London then connecting on to, say, Barcelona or Nice. I specifically would not exempt those flying to/from London and connecting domestically to/from anothr UK airport. Those feeder flights need binning off and replaced with organised, properly protected (by the airline) connections by rail. Why would a Geordie take the train to Heathrow for a long-haul flight knowing they must self-insure or take out travel insurance to protect them against the consequences of a missed connection, when they can just take a taxi to Newcastle airport and have the airline look after them? It's not just that it's often cheaper to fly than pay the Simpler Fare to travel by train, it's also the structural problem that prompted this thread that makes mixed-mode rail/air journeys unattractive relative to connecting flights.

I don't think making a passenger flying

Newcastle > Heathrow > New York
New York > Heathrow > Newcastle

pay for four single tickets between Heathrow and Central London (one for each arrival and another for each departure) will fix the problem by itself, but it's an appropriate tax on something that should be discouraged. If you don't want to pay it, take the train or coach.

As I indicated above, I'm cautiously sympathetic to Pigouvian taxes, while remaining aware of how quickly universality can generate unfairness when imposed on a diverse population with such heterogeneous needs. Mandatory bundling of airport public transport tickets with plane tickets sounds persuasive in this thread, and feels quite elegant at the policy level. Not sure it scales effectively enough to the human level.

I think having a really good web interface for people wanting to exchange or part-exchange their ticket because they're not going to the city the airport serves, would be really important. It would be easy to get it wrong and annoy people. But you probably can't achieve these benefits without annoying anybody.

 

[agk2126]

Agree with most of this.

The trouble with the £5 drop-off fee for people who would use the M25 if travelling by car, but would go via zone 1 if taking the train, is that for a family of 4, the premium that is added to the one-way public transport fare (not even the fare, just the premium that pays the track access charge for using the rail tunnel), is considerably more than the drop-off charge.

That drop-off charge is, in my view, tokenostic at best. Particularly as you can drop off in the long-stay car park for nothing. But even if people don't know that or prefer the convenience of being dropped off at the terminal, all the drop-off charge is going to nudge them to do is look at the public transport option. At which point they see the fares and conclude it would be better to pay the £5.

Yes. You touch on a challenge with public transport pricing in general, not unique to airport trips, across the developed world. At a certain point, for a certain number of passengers, travel by car (private car or taxi/Uber) is much lower than bus or rail. This is equally true for local and intercity journeys.

This is probably experienced most acutely for families or groups paying destination-specific (e.g. airport) public transport surcharges on public transport. A per-vehicle fee to drive vs. a per-person Heathrow surcharge for the Piccadilly Line compared to other Zone 6 stations? For people with access to a car, there's a clear winner in this mode choice.

Group discounted tickets seem like the clear remedy, yet they seem somewhat rare.

I'd suggest this is one of the relatively few ways the UK could take some passenger rail ideas from the US. For all trips, Amtrak offers generous group discounts, up to a 60% discount per ticket for 8 or more passengers. For airport rail access (to/from either airport) in the San Francisco Bay Area, there's a 20% discount for two or more passengers. This policy suggests Americans, already culturally oriented towards driving places, respond to a stronger nudge to travel by rail. This could work here as well.

In contrast, most TOCs in Britain offer more modest group discounts, if any, often set a threshold at 10 or more people.

 

[mernrith]

Those feeder flights need binning off and replaced with organised, properly protected (by the airline) connections by rail. Why would a Geordie take the train to Heathrow for a long-haul flight knowing they must self-insure or take out travel insurance to protect them against the consequences of a missed connection, when they can just take a taxi to Newcastle airport and have the airline look after them? It's not just that it's often cheaper to fly than pay the Simpler Fare to travel by train, it's also the structural problem that prompted this thread that makes mixed-mode rail/air journeys unattractive relative to connecting flights.

Apparently as a Durham-Far East frequent flyer I believe that taking the train to Heathrow/Manchester/Edinburgh and catch a flight is indeed cheaper than another feeder flight right into Tyne, and quite the major choice. (Could be my airline of choice though - I don't fly Emirates)
People (those whom I know) fly from Newcastle care less about the price, but instead they feel safer with less issues with flights.
TPE, LNER and Manchester Airport have almost made me missed my flight/train for a couple of times (In contrast, airlines haven't but I do know people have some beef with BA) so I do agree to some extent that price isn't the main concern of using a mixed modal trip for some - whatever gets me to the destination on time is. And clearly rail isn't the best performer in this aspect.

 

[redreni]

So what would happen if the flight is when there are no trains at a suitable time?
I can think of plenty of airports you could get to by train which have flights outside of the train timetable.

I expect ticket holders would complain about the train timetable, and rightly so.

 

[The exile]

I expect ticket holders would complain about the train timetable, and rightly so.

The “included in the ticket price” would apply to local travel only (so much of it not trains) and public transport should be serving airports at all times when there are flights.

 

[Topological]

Our work booking service will price tickets from GWR stations to any international destination with a codeshare for the train. I assume this has been mentioned, but I got lost amongst all the arguments around free travel.

Most rail staff are understanding when a clearly tired traveller identifies that the plane was very late, or was very early because of the impact of tailwinds. I usually allow around 2 hours from Heathrow landing to Reading/Paddington departure. I think that is "reasonable", but it does mean that if the flight arrives over an hour early I am in position well in advance of the GWR. Usually I can travel.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The issue with multi-mode is the cost when things go wrong. If BA or KLM screw up my connection to a long haul flight then it is their problem for them to fix at their expense. If LNER or TPE screw up then it is my problem to fix at my expense.

The only way of solving this is selling train tickets under a flight number. But whether the railways or airlines would be happy to accept the cost of the risk is the big issue.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Our work booking service will price tickets from GWR stations to any international destination with a codeshare for the train. I assume this has been mentioned, but I got lost amongst all the arguments around free travel.

Most rail staff are understanding when a clearly tired traveller identifies that the plane was very late, or was very early because of the impact of tailwinds. I usually allow around 2 hours from Heathrow landing to Reading/Paddington departure. I think that is "reasonable", but it does mean that if the flight arrives over an hour early I am in position well in advance of the GWR. Usually I can travel.

Are you sure that's a codeshare, which would mean the train having a BAxxxx etc flight number, or just selling the two separate things together?

 

[Topological]

Are you sure that's a codeshare, which would mean the train having a BAxxxx etc flight number, or just selling the two separate things together?

It is a very good question. So it is not a codeshare, but is treated as part of the booking. For a test going to America in a couple of weeks I got:

Flight no. 9B5750Cabin class Economy

---

• Aircraft: Train
• Flight time: 2h 29m

Or in full after flying in from New Orleans overnight the details are:

Stop:
07:30
London Heathrow Airport(LHR)1h 42m
09:12
London Heathrow Airport(LHR)
Flight no. 9B5750Cabin class Economy

---

• Aircraft: Train
• Flight time: 2h 29m

Touchdown:
09:33Paddington Railway Station (QQP) 0h 15m

Touchdown:
10:11Reading Railway Service (XRE) 0h 02m

Touchdown:
10:38Swindon Railway Station (XWS) 0h 02m

Touchdown:
11:02Parkway Railway Station (BPR) 0h 02m

Touchdown:
11:26Newport Railway Station (XNE) 0h 02m
14 Feb11:41Cardiff Railway Station (CFW)

 

[lfc84]

I have received an email from Trip.com which states:

Flight delays happen. Now, your train ticket doesn't have to add to the stress. We're introducing fee-free changes for airport train tickets. If your flight changes, you can now amend your train ticket to or from the airport with no amendement fee. Travel door-to-door with more flexibility and peace of mind.

*T&Cs apply. Only valid on tickets to or from designated airport stations. App bookings only.

I haven't got the app installed since my phone is out of space. There's no link in the email to a page on the website to show the T&Cs.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's a bit naughty, as it's just the £10 admin fee that is waived. It isn't incorrect per se, but people will be misled by it into thinking the fare difference won't be due, and it will.

Personally I'd bin the admin fee for changing Advances entirely, not just for airports, though doing so for airports is a good start even if the promotional wording is a bit sly. Unlike walk-ups there's no scope for fraud as it has to be done before the booked departure time, and nobody is actually doing any admin. Just charge the fare difference. Crikey, Premier Inn even refunds the difference if your new date is cheaper (which is a handy way of getting a partial refund if you won't ever need a given nonrefundable booking if it was quite expensive, though I bet few think of that).

 

[rapmastaj]

The Airport Advances from Manchester are an absolute lifesaver. Equivalent tickets should be available for long distance journeys from all airports.

Without this flexibility, it's so much more hassle to fly into other airports that are further from home. So you might be forced into booking a connecting flight on cost/time grounds when a connecting rail journey would be a far better option in a world with sane ticketing.