Does anybody not fly?

[Butts]

I used to try and take the train between Scotland and the South of England but recently the advance fares have hiked to the point where it is cheaper to fly.

Not to mention far quicker.

Flying Glasgow - Southampton tomorrow = 1 Hour.

 

[miklcct]

Not to mention far quicker.

Flying Glasgow - Southampton tomorrow = 1 Hour.

Unfortunately I usually need Edinburgh rather than Glasgow, which is only served by Loganair - an expensive airline with totally unaffordable flights that it is cheaper to buy super off-peak train tickets instead.

The only domestic round-trip I flew when I lived in Bournemouth was between Gatwick and Edinburgh, because the Loganair flight to/from Southampton was unaffordable, and the Bournemouth - Edinburgh low-cost carrier route did not operate in winter.

 

[Dr Hoo]

40 flights a year is definitely a jetsetter.

I'm quite pleased that there seem to be a few like me who have flown, aren't ruling out flying in the future, but would rather not given the choice

I never cease to be amazed at how much @yorksrob and I have in common (as well as how much our opinions often differ strongly).
Although I have flown quite a lot in the past (often paid for by BR within the UK when I lived and worked in Scotland) the whole rigmarole and delays just seemed to get worse with every trip.
Things steadily convinced me that it was just an awful experience that was simply endured and seriously took the shine off any holiday, both outward and return.
The last time I flew was in 2017.

 

[takno]

I never cease to be amazed at how much @yorksrob and I have in common (as well as how much our opinions often differ strongly).
Although I have flown quite a lot in the past (often paid for by BR within the UK when I lived and worked in Scotland) the whole rigmarole and delays just seemed to get worse with every trip.
Things steadily convinced me that it was just an awful experience that was simply endured and seriously took the shine off any holiday, both outward and return.
The last time I flew was in 2017.

On the upside, airlines have been forced to up their compensation and support game massively since 2017, which means that they are probably working harder to avoid delays and when you get them it can be quite profitable.

In comparison I can easily be 2 hours late on a train and the best I'll get is my fare refunded and a reluctant agreement to actually get me where I want to go. In most of Europe you're not even entitled to that

 

[Butts]

Unfortunately I usually need Edinburgh rather than Glasgow, which is only served by Loganair - an expensive airline with totally unaffordable flights that it is cheaper to buy super off-peak train tickets instead.

The only domestic round-trip I flew when I lived in Bournemouth was between Gatwick and Edinburgh, because the Loganair flight to/from Southampton was unaffordable, and the Bournemouth - Edinburgh low-cost carrier route did not operate in winter.

It's a shame EasyJet don't pick up Edinburgh to Southampton as well as Glasgow.

Since the demise of Flybe fares have been unaffordable on Logan air.

BA Cityfler occasionally sending a few Embraer's down would also be welcome.

it's 7 Hours plus on the Train from Glasgow to Southampton - an Embraer could do it in well under an hour if let off the leash.

The title of the thread should be Why Does Anybody Not Fly ?

 

[yorksrob]

I never cease to be amazed at how much @yorksrob and I have in common (as well as how much our opinions often differ strongly).
Although I have flown quite a lot in the past (often paid for by BR within the UK when I lived and worked in Scotland) the whole rigmarole and delays just seemed to get worse with every trip.
Things steadily convinced me that it was just an awful experience that was simply endured and seriously took the shine off any holiday, both outward and return.
The last time I flew was in 2017.

We just love the railway I guess

Still the best way to get around.

 

[nlogax]

Can't 100% rely on the railway to get me to or from the other end of the country when I need to be there, so unfortunately domestic flights are still a regular necessity for me.

Long haul flights are still the joy I seek out. Hours and hours staring out of the window, a whisky or two and a couple of good movies, I'm utterly blissed out. Can't imagine not doing that.

 

[Starmill]

On the upside, airlines have been forced to up their compensation and support game massively since 2017, which means that they are probably working harder to avoid delays and when you get them it can be quite profitable.

In comparison I can easily be 2 hours late on a train and the best I'll get is my fare refunded and a reluctant agreement to actually get me where I want to go. In most of Europe you're not even entitled to that

I think for delays over two hours the train companies really should all be providing non-alcoholic drinks like tea or water, or covering their costs, in addition to the standard compensation for the delay. It's very poor that they often do not even manage that usually. Obviously it's less easy to provide onboard but lots of people are stuck at stations.

 

[Dr Hoo]

I'm surprised that people seem to be so chilled out over massive delays because the compensation is apparently now more generous.

The utter boredom of being stranded in a strange airport/city/hotel with no relevant currency or no clean laundry (or perhaps no access to checked luggage at all) for 24 hours is just ghastly. Yet it has caught me out on a number of long trips.

Then add in hours stuck in a centre seat between other passengers who don't speak a word of English and discovering that the in flight entertainment screen/plug at your seat doesn't work and that you're in the row behind all the parents with infants who (between the lot of them) never stop crying and screaming on an overnight flight. More *****ed out than 'blissed out' IMHO.

And besides the plane there's all the problems of having just had food poisoning/severe sunburn/been mugged/etc. whilst on what was naively envisaged as a 'break' anyway.

 

[route101]

Unfortunately I usually need Edinburgh rather than Glasgow, which is only served by Loganair - an expensive airline with totally unaffordable flights that it is cheaper to buy super off-peak train tickets instead.

The only domestic round-trip I flew when I lived in Bournemouth was between Gatwick and Edinburgh, because the Loganair flight to/from Southampton was unaffordable, and the Bournemouth - Edinburgh low-cost carrier route did not operate in winter.

Yes, you used to be lucky and find a Loganair one way for around £40 one way on the Southampton route.

 

[dk1]

I flew to Dublin from Stansted (back into Luton) back in May. Was the first time I’d flown in almost 24 years.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Unfortunately I usually need Edinburgh rather than Glasgow, which is only served by Loganair - an expensive airline with totally unaffordable flights that it is cheaper to buy super off-peak train tickets instead.

£120 each way for random week in a month’s time, inclusive of 15kg hold luggage and a coffee and a snack, isn’t expensive for the distance.

Loganair don’t do drip-pricing.

 

[route101]

I flew to Dublin from Stansted (back into Luton) back in May. Was the first time I’d flown in almost 24 years.

How did you find it?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jun 2024 ==

Checked my flights for 2024. I am on 18 flights so far this year, that counts single legs. Usually on 3 or 4 by this time. My record is 20 within a year.

 

[miklcct]

£120 each way for random week in a month’s time, inclusive of 15kg hold luggage and a coffee and a snack, isn’t expensive for the distance.

Loganair don’t do drip-pricing.

A train ticket is £111 super off-peak from Southampton to Edinburgh, valid on all trains over the weekend. I'll travel by train instead. Completely turn up and go, without the need to chase for a particular train. Service runs every half an hour by changing at London. Free to have a lunch en-route at York as well. And no luggage limit as well.

I fly because the alternative is not practical. In this case, you have to pay a premium to fly.

I tried once flying domestically and it isn't worth it now, since LNER went one-way pricing. If LNER went one-way pricing a few years earlier, I wouldn't even have flown my Edinburgh - Gatwick back then in 2022 and would just use a flexible ticket to travel home from Edinburgh to Bournemouth immediately after racing.

 

[route101]

A train ticket is £111 super off-peak from Southampton to Edinburgh, valid on all trains over the weekend. I'll travel by train instead. Completely turn up and go, without the need to chase for a particular train. Service runs every half an hour by changing at London. Free to have a lunch en-route at York as well. And no luggage limit as well.

I fly because the alternative is not practical. In this case, you have to pay a premium to fly.

I tried once flying domestically and it isn't worth it now, since LNER went one-way pricing. If LNER went one-way pricing a few years earlier, I wouldn't even have flown my Edinburgh - Gatwick back then in 2022 and would just use a flexible ticket to travel home from Edinburgh to Bournemouth immediately after racing.

I must say some of the pricing is all over the place on domestic flights. On BA its from £40 one way up to over £200. I guess is depends on events etc.

 

[dk1]

How did you find it?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jun 2024 ==

Checked my flights for 2024. I am on 18 flights so far this year, that counts single legs. Usually on 3 or 4 by this time. My record is 20 within a year.

It was okay and obviously lots of stuff has changed security wise as well as online booking/baggage/check-in.

 

[Tetchytyke]

I must say some of the pricing is all over the place on domestic flights. On BA its from £40 one way up to over £200. I guess is depends on events etc.

With BA, a lot of it depends on when you travel. If the flight is one that connects nicely with a bank of long-haul departures from Heathrow then the domestic fares reflect that, for instance the 4pm off Manchester is nearly always the most expensive flight and that's the one that connects into the evening bank of departures from Heathrow. I used to see similar from Newcastle when I flew that route. My guess, and it is a guess, is that BA are pricing domestic passengers off those particular flights so that long-haul passengers may be accommodated.

Loganair don't seem to have a particularly sophisticated yield management system. From here it's noticeable that Loganair are more expensive on the days when EasyJet don't fly a route, but otherwise the tickets really do just get more expensive the closer it is to the travel date.

A train ticket is £111 super off-peak from Southampton to Edinburgh, valid on all trains over the weekend....

I fly because the alternative is not practical. In this case, you have to pay a premium to fly.

You really do pay your money and take your choice. This Friday teatime it's £146 on Loganair or £100 or so on the train with an advance ticket. Yes that's more than the train but the travel time is 85 minutes rather than 7 hours.

It's also worth noting that EasyJet at the same time is £105, but it goes up to £138 if you add a 15kg bag. I firmly believe Loganair have an unfair reputation for being expensive precisely because they don't engage in drip pricing.

From an environmental perspective, the premium isn't strictly a bad thing either.

 

[sprunt]

Have you not been in a BA Lounge ?

I suspect at least 99.9% of people haven't been in a BA lounge.

travelled by rail to the Japan

That's a good trick! Presumably you travelled by rail to somewhere and caught a ferry?

 

[takno]

It's also worth noting that EasyJet at the same time is £105, but it goes up to £138 if you add a 15kg bag. I firmly believe Loganair have an unfair reputation for being expensive precisely because they don't engage in drip pricing.

From an environmental perspective, the premium isn't strictly a bad thing either.

Loganair don't give me a discount for travelling small-bag-only, do give me a silly biscuit I don't really want, and insist on running stupid tiny little planes on routes where you could fill something significantly larger. To add insult to injury they also seem to run exclusively at annoying times, and then land you on a remote stand with no bus waiting at Edinburgh.

Yield management doesn't come into it when they make the whole process so needlessly expensive and unpleasant.

(I only really mention the biscuit because on at least 2 previous occasions the plane has taken off at least 15 minutes late while their dodgy catering suppliers stick a box of the stupid things on the plane)

 

[Butts]

I must say some of the pricing is all over the place on domestic flights. On BA its from £40 one way up to over £200. I guess is depends on events etc.

Indeed, the greater the demand the price only goes one way.

The trick is to book early and or travel at an unpopular time/day

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jun 2024 ==

I suspect at least 99.9% of people haven't been in a BA lounge.

Possibly true, and they think it's like a 1st Class Rail Lounge by the sound of some of the comments.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 24 Jun 2024 ==

From an environmental perspective, the premium isn't strictly a bad thing either.

As long as the BRICS Nations and the USA keep pumping it out it's almost a case of virtue signalling.

Next you'll be suggesting they Tax Aviation Spirit

NB BRICS......Brazil, Russia, India, China et al

 

[Tetchytyke]

Loganair don't give me a discount for travelling small-bag-only, do give me a silly biscuit I don't really want, and insist on running stupid tiny little planes on routes where you could fill something significantly larger.

Could they fill something "significantly larger", though, at the frequency they offer?

Loganair fly Southampton-Edinburgh 3x daily with a 49-seat aircraft. EasyJet fly Southampton-Glasgow 1x daily with a 156 (A319) or 186 (A320) seat aircraft. And, as we've seen, similar prices.

It's the same here. Loganair fly 4x daily to Manchester/Liverpool with a 72-seat aircraft. EasyJet will fly 1x daily during midweek and 2x daily on Fridays and Sundays with a 156-seat (A319) aircraft.

Drip pricing pays off for people who are able to travel with a small rucksack. For everyone else, there's bugger all difference in price, especially now the 'large cabin bag' option on EasyJet is usually only £1-£2 cheaper than the 15kg hold bag option. And judging by the number of people I see who get caught out by just how small the 'small cabin bag' really is, I'd say most people need to take more than the 'small cabin bag'.

But, as always, YMMV.

As long as the BRICS Nations and the USA keep pumping it out it's almost a case of virtue signalling.

Next you'll be suggesting they Tax Aviation Spirit

I fully endorse them not taxing the first four litres and 200 sticks of finest aviation spirit

 

[notverydeep]

That's a good trick! Presumably you travelled by rail to somewhere and caught a ferry?

Yes, just avoiding making a long post even longer, but the easiest routes are Dalian (Liaoning, China) or Qingdao (Shandong) to Incheon (South Korea) - generally overnight and then the fast ferry between Busan and Hakata Port (Fukuoka) in Japan or the overnight ferry to Shimonoseki. I have used all of these. There are (or at least were) some excellent diesel hauled trains in South Korea!

Sadly of course the straightforward Trans-Siberian routes to China are less easy to recommend these days. There is a route through Turkey and the Caucasus region and by ferry across the Caspian that avoids Belarus, Russia or Ukraine (and Iran) - a route that featured in the first series of Race Across the World (recommended). Though this route can be done with more information and less difficulty than the contestants encountered, and is very interesting (I have done the Kazakhstan to China part of this route), it does take quite a bit more time than the route via Moscow...

 

[Butts]

Could they fill something "significantly larger", though, at the frequency they offer?

Loganair fly Southampton-Edinburgh 3x daily with a 49-seat aircraft. EasyJet fly Southampton-Glasgow 1x daily with a 156 (A319) or 186 (A320) seat aircraft. And, as we've seen, similar prices.

It's the same here. Loganair fly 4x daily to Manchester/Liverpool with a 72-seat aircraft. EasyJet will fly 1x daily during midweek and 2x daily on Fridays and Sundays with a 156-seat (A319) aircraft.

Drip pricing pays off for people who are able to travel with a small rucksack. For everyone else, there's bugger all difference in price, especially now the 'large cabin bag' option on EasyJet is usually only £1-£2 cheaper than the 15kg hold bag option. And judging by the number of people I see who get caught out by just how small the 'small cabin bag' really is, I'd say most people need to take more than the 'small cabin bag'.

But, as always, YMMV.


I fully endorse them not taxing the first four litres and 200 sticks of finest aviation spirit

Judging by the Flights I have been on between Glasgow and Southampton all were A320's and reasonably full - I only paid £60 or £70 odd return - was that an opening offer ?

Think a lot of Cruise Passengers may be using it

If Easyjet can get onto Edinburgh - Southampton it would be great.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Judging by the Flights I have been on between Glasgow and Southampton all were A320's and reasonably full - I only paid £60 or £70 odd return - was that an opening offer ?

If my experience is anything to go by, EasyJet will have “introductory offers” until such a time as any competition withdraws from the route. After that, all bets are off.

Looks like there are random days in August on that row where it’s £25-£30 each way, but then the cabin bag or hold bag is another £25-£30 each way. Still a good price, but the drip pricing does make it look cheaper than it usually is in reality.

 

[takno]

Could they fill something "significantly larger", though, at the frequency they offer?

Loganair fly Southampton-Edinburgh 3x daily with a 49-seat aircraft. EasyJet fly Southampton-Glasgow 1x daily with a 156 (A319) or 186 (A320) seat aircraft. And, as we've seen, similar prices.

It's the same here. Loganair fly 4x daily to Manchester/Liverpool with a 72-seat aircraft. EasyJet will fly 1x daily during midweek and 2x daily on Fridays and Sundays with a 156-seat (A319) aircraft.

Drip pricing pays off for people who are able to travel with a small rucksack. For everyone else, there's bugger all difference in price, especially now the 'large cabin bag' option on EasyJet is usually only £1-£2 cheaper than the 15kg hold bag option. And judging by the number of people I see who get caught out by just how small the 'small cabin bag' really is, I'd say most people need to take more than the 'small cabin bag'.

But, as always, YMMV.


I fully endorse them not taxing the first four litres and 200 sticks of finest aviation spirit

Most of the Easyjet flights I've been on recently it's actually been cheaper to check a bag than have a large carry-on. Simple fact is that that carry-ons were meant to be small things you could carry in the first place. As soon as people started buying hard suitcases that were the exactly the maximum dimensions and had to be wheeled about the place then they stopped being cheaper for the airlines to manage. Add in the fact that the carryons can't easily be weighed, and the removal of staff from the luggage check-in process and all the reasons to discourage checked baggage are gone. The current situation allows planes to embark and disembark quickly and allocates the pricing somewhat more in line with the cost to the airline.

People being "caught out" doesn't indicate that they "need" more than a small cabin bag. It indicates that they either didn't read the rules or assumed that they would get away with it. The booking sites are quite tediously clear on how big the bag sizes are, and frankly make it fairly difficult to pass through without booking luggage of some kind.

Price difference-wise, Fly-be were effortlessly filling 1-2 flights a day between Exeter and Edinburgh with prices often well under half Loganair's cheapest tickets. Those planes still weren't big, but were still a lot bigger.

For a comparison with Easyjet, you can usually fly to Bristol on at least 2 of the 4 flights day for about 1/3rd of the price, so I'm not convinced introductory anything is much of a factor.

 

[route101]

Judging by the Flights I have been on between Glasgow and Southampton all were A320's and reasonably full - I only paid £60 or £70 odd return - was that an opening offer ?

Think a lot of Cruise Passengers may be using it

If Easyjet can get onto Edinburgh - Southampton it would be great.

That is a good price, I flew the route when it first started in November and paid £25 one way. I was hoping it would go 2x daily.

 

[signed]

Having been based in Paris, I only fly if there is either no alternative (a flight from Palermo or Dublin for ex.), or where it is massively inconvenient to go (Toulouse is one spiky one, taking 5h for 100+€ using the train compared to €50 on EZ for 3h airport times included).

The rest is railway or car.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Price difference-wise, Fly-be were effortlessly filling 1-2 flights a day between Exeter and Edinburgh with prices often well under half Loganair's cheapest tickets.

Flybe were even more aggressive on the drip-pricing than EasyJet are. And Flybe went bust- twice.

The booking sites are quite tediously clear on how big the bag sizes are

They’re not that clear, and some recent changes have been very sneaky. For instance buying an upfront or extra leg room seat on EasyJet used to grant you a large cabin bag, now it doesn’t, and that change wasn’t publicised.

EasyJet showed their true colours here when Flybe went bust. Within minutes of Flybe announcing they’d gone bust, EasyJet had ramped up their prices to £300 each way to and from the island. It was so quickly it must have been a deliberate choice and not an automatic algorithm thing.

Anyway. Tomorrow I’m not flying off the island, I’m taking the ferry to Liverpool. £26 single as a foot passenger, and the bar on Manannan sells Norseman lager. Really can’t argue with that.

 

[AlterEgo]

You can't buy your way into a BA Lounge it's status only. If you pay to get into an Aspire Lounge you will find out why.

Some of the Aspire Lounges are better than BA Lounges though, at outstations.

 

[takno]

Some of the Aspire Lounges are better than BA Lounges though, at outstations.

Personally I think the Aspire lounge at Edinburgh is significantly better than the BA one. It didn't used to be, but they upped their game significantly on food a while ago. One of the factors of course is that the Aspire lounge isn't chock full of status snobs. Beyond that, all that BA really do better is access to medium-cheap wine and house spirits.