Highly unlikely to be true and extremely surprising if it is. Far more likely the 040 services are simply not planned and open for booking more than a few weeks hence. There are so many timetable changes on NX now, month after month, it is becoming extremely hard to reliably book more than a few weeks ahead without later getting an email to say your journey has changed, or the departure cancelled.
Edwards are the only operator that could probably run an independent intercity coaching business that I can see, but if all else fails then I definitely see them taking on Flix work at a large scale!
Minded to agree on this - the 040 is pretty clearly NX's strongest corridor and going from every 30 minutes to nothing in one go would more-or-less mark the end of NX as a going concern IMO. Only way I could see it happening is if Edwards went over to Flix, but given they have every other Bristol/Wales/South West service as well you'd expect to see the Heathrow and Birmingham routes off the booking engine completely as well.
Apart from this diagram is Stagecoach Yorkshire just on the 560/564? Whether they try and get a replacement on Sheffield-London might be an interesting indication of how much fight NX has left, though find it slightly harder to see the Halifax extension continuing sadly.
Seems rather foolish from NX if this is the case, with the current state of their operation they're hardly in a position to be prescriptive in this way. Are there any other Go-Ahead companies still on NX aside from Oxford Bus? Can't keep track of which with 'independent-sounding' names are actually Go-Ahead.
My understanding is that it's only Plymouth Citycoach/Dartline that has Flix work currently? So I'm not quite sure why NX are throwing a fit over what seems to be a non issue.
Brighton & Hove (Spirit of Sussex) and Go South Coast.
Wouldn't be a great shift for Leeds/NE passengers, Sheffield's less of a diversion than some cities but still reduces competitiveness with Flix. More reasonable than London to Bristol with a change at Heathrow though!
Thanks - not sure about EYMS but find it hard to imagine NX removing OBC from the network, they could easily pivot to operating the 737 as part of the Airline with NX the only real loser in that scenario.
East Yorkshire still run NX work
Most of the work EY has starts and ends in Hull so it's hard to see who else could run it
Still using 67-registration Levante 2s on some workings alongside 19-registration Levante 3s so assume that there is an element of needing fleet renewal, like the issue that killed off Megabus.
East Yorkshire and Oxford Bus still do NatEx work and there were rumours or plans for Fourways to start doing some too.
Your suggestion wouldn't work as Luton and Stansted are both under stupid concession agreements to prevent other companies running buses there. So Oxford Airline would only actually get as far as Luton Airport Parkway (like Flixbus) and somewhere outside Stansted Airport.
How much of that though is because of where the operator is based so it's just a dead mileage thing rather than that being where the demand is?
We do carry a few passengers from Hull, it varies from day to day but do get a lot between Hull and Lincoln and Hull and Leeds
So just someone messed up then? Thank god for that.
040 issue confirmed as a technical problem. Bookings should now all be showing correctly on journey planner post-6 September although the timetable page has yet to update.
They certainly used to be run from Chesterfield
That has to serve Bristol Airport for it to be numbered in the 2XX series of routes right?
It's 105 not 205.
That would make more sense, thankyou
Ah, so this may be why the 19.30 from Birmingham to Derby, Leeds and Bradford has been axed, seems a shame really as the one after gets into Leeds too late and the one before is a bit too early from Birmingham, wasn't badly used when I've used it although has been a bit light when it's got to Leeds.
Speaking from my previous industry experience where the operator I worked at ran National Express (two routes, fifteen PVR until their in house operation swiped one of them with their connivance) if a contractor is working for 'opposition' such as Megabus that would result in the end of any contracts with National Express/NX.
With Cross Countrys Birmingham to Cardiff route being as unreliable as it is, surely this would be the perfect time to be promoting this route and offering a viable alternative but clearly not. This 'fast' routing was always what gave NX the edge over Megabus and now more recently Flixbus, because both of those operators ran most of their buses via Bristol and were slower. Hopefully Flixbus jumps in to fill the void here as they have at least 3 Birmingham - South Wales & vice versa duties which spend more than half of their day parked up in the depot or on excessive amounts of layover. You can easily squeeze another trip out of the vehicles but you'd need more drivers.
Chalfont still work for both NX and Flixbus but out of different depots. Stotts I am sure used to do NatEx and Megabus. Stagecoach Yorkshire used to run both Megabus and National Express albeit out of Chesterfield for NatEx and Woolley Edge for Megabus. There has been a history of operators working for both NX and other intercity operators, so it's interesting that NX seem to have one rule for one, and another rule for other operators.
That's the thing I don't think National Express seem to understand, is that replacement work is now readily available for OpCo's that it decides to take off the network. Whether that be Flix, Rail Replacement etc
