Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Thought of this in relation to the discussion about yet another bit of the network being closed due to severe weather.
With this becoming more common for whatever reason (a combination of both more severe weather due to climate change and of a greater risk aversion by Network Rail post Carmont) do we need to look at practices used by airlines in the US where very severe weather is traditionally more common than here?
The basis is essentially that if it looks like a storm is brewing, as far ahead as possible, a "travel waiver" is declared for the potentially at-risk period of time. This makes all tickets, regardless of their normal conditions, changeable and refundable for that period, so people can replan their trip in advance or call it off entirely on the basis that it is likely, but not certain, to be disrupted. This would apply to all tickets in a given booking - obviously if your outward was tomorrow you would need to rebook your return - and could be widened slightly to include tickets obviously related to the same trip in other bookings by explaining this to customer services.
This could be done by waiving the admin fee for refunding walk up tickets purchased for such a period and making Advances refundable if in the declared waiver period and booked prior to the declaration of the period.
This would seem to make a lot of sense to me as a standard policy in preference to "everything's fine" up until a day or two ago and then a very fast declaration of "do not travel". What do others think?
With this becoming more common for whatever reason (a combination of both more severe weather due to climate change and of a greater risk aversion by Network Rail post Carmont) do we need to look at practices used by airlines in the US where very severe weather is traditionally more common than here?
The basis is essentially that if it looks like a storm is brewing, as far ahead as possible, a "travel waiver" is declared for the potentially at-risk period of time. This makes all tickets, regardless of their normal conditions, changeable and refundable for that period, so people can replan their trip in advance or call it off entirely on the basis that it is likely, but not certain, to be disrupted. This would apply to all tickets in a given booking - obviously if your outward was tomorrow you would need to rebook your return - and could be widened slightly to include tickets obviously related to the same trip in other bookings by explaining this to customer services.
This could be done by waiving the admin fee for refunding walk up tickets purchased for such a period and making Advances refundable if in the declared waiver period and booked prior to the declaration of the period.
This would seem to make a lot of sense to me as a standard policy in preference to "everything's fine" up until a day or two ago and then a very fast declaration of "do not travel". What do others think?
