This "research" (aka PR spin) is full of holes if you look at the assertions behind its misleading claims.
"Reveals"? It's hardly as if the environmental credentials of rail vs air are unknown. More to the point, they rather conveniently omit any comparison for the (partially) unelectrified routes of Exeter to Edinburgh and Manchester to Aberdeen, both being journeys likely to involve a Voyager or HST - neither of which are exactly the cleanest in terms of emissions...
In terms of time, they quote the fastest possible train times even though in reality most services take longer. For example, for London to Newcastle they quote 2h36m - but there is only one train a day that manages it that quickly. The xx:00 fasts typically take 10 minutes longer, whilst the LNER xx:30 semifasts take over half an hour longer at 3h11m+. That's to say nothing of the countless weekends (or, increasingly, weekdays) with engineering works that considerably lengthen journey times.
They also take the scheduled departure times from Euston/Kings Cross, even though most people are travelling to or from somewhere in the city centre - so as a minimum I'd say you need to add on 20 minutes to get from (say) Oxford Circus to Euston or Kings Cross. The amount of time allowed at the airports is also excessive - an hour is plenty for the kind of experienced traveller they imply. In fact at London City that would be generous as the check-in desks generally only close 20 minutes before departure.
In terms of cost they are being downright misleading in including the cost of a taxi at either end. Very few people would use a taxi, given that this generally takes longer and there are decent public transport links for all but one of the airports they refer to. For Exeter I could perhaps slightly understand it as there are only local bus services to the city centre, but for all of the others there are rail links (whether heavy or light) or dedicated express buses.
The inclusion of baggage and seat selection fees for the flights is also misleading. With Loganair or BA a cabin-size suitcase travels for free even on the cheapest fare, which is as much as most people will take. And who really needs seat selection on a ~1 hour flight? By comparison most rail retailers only give you seat selection
preferences, which are often ignored anyway when reservations are issued.
Furthermore, searching one month ahead gives a misleading impression of the relative cost of flights vs trains. A lot of people want to make plans further ahead than that, but whereas airlines take bookings ~12 months ahead, Advances generally only go on sale 12 weeks ahead. For a limited selection of routes it's longer than that - but again only through specific retailers and for certain days of the week, and times of day. If you did a comparison based on the walk-up Anytime fares you'd often be quoted 3+ months ahead of time, or nearer the date of travel once Advances sell out, rail would come out much less favourably. Let alone occasions where LNER/Avanti's "compulsory reservation" nonsense causes only first class fares to be offered.
On the frequency front, they only perform this comparison for London to Edinburgh (conveniently omitting to mention that rail is less frequent for London to Glasgow!), but even here they include Avanti services that run via the West Midlands and thus take around 6 hours. Given that elsewhere they have claimed the train takes 4h20m (again, rarely possible) it's unreasonable to include such slow Avanti services in frequency comparisons. And given that they're boasting about 'flexibility', they seem to have conveniently overlooked the fact that there's no way of getting to London for 9am from Glasgow or Edinburgh without leaving on the Sleeper the night before...
A few more tidbits that speak to the poor quality of this "report":
- "Save on ... card fees"? Err, not for the last 6 years since card fees were banned!
- "Claim a refund ... if your journey is delayed or cancelled via Delay Repay"? Yet another case of causing confusion between refunds and Delay Repay, liable to land some unwary customers with threats of fraud prosecutions.
- "Use a digital ticket for added protection if things go wrong"? What kind of protection would that be?
It's such a shame, because there are absolutely some valid points in there! But they are diluted by misleading and unfair comparisons.
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