The cost of a lastminute Manchester to London train ticket is high compared with the cost of a Flixbus ticket. Those train tickets will wipe out of the profits from a significant number of Flixbus ticket sales. I wonder whether Flixbus HQ or the coach operator will foot the bill?
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Flixbus Discussion
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Thats one thing Flixbus need to improve on breakdowns .They just cancel the service one thing National Express and Megabus will always try to get you even late.
Flying Snail
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Breakdowns and other disruptions are inevitable, abandoning customers to sort their own arrangements out in that way is just not good enough.
It stands to reason that many people using low cost coach travel are simply not in a position to purchase walk-up long distance rail fares with the promise that Flix will reimburse them at a later date, a promise that based on previous reports I'd be less that confident they will honour.
Blindtraveler
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And herein lies the reason I will not countenance using this joke of a service
Mainline421
Member
In my experience Flixbus won't actually reimburse, I had a booking from Elbasan in Albania to Ohrid Macedonia last year which didn't run and all Flix would do is repeatedly insist it's the operator's responsibility, (who have no website, and won't pick up the phone or reply on the Gmail address(!) provided by Flix).
markymark2000
On Moderation
Experiences I hear are very much one way or another. Either really good (value for money, comfort, stop location) or really bad (abandonment, lack of customer service causing more issues). There seems to be no attempt to improve a bad situation such as finding a replacement bus if an issue happens.
They are a typical low cost model though and rely on passengers not knowing their full rights when things go wrong. For those passengers who do know their rights, Flixbus rely on those passengers not going to court or regulatory bodies etc to exercise their rights and give up before getting their money back.
I know Megabus were the same at times and people still used and supported them.
They are a typical low cost model though and rely on passengers not knowing their full rights when things go wrong. For those passengers who do know their rights, Flixbus rely on those passengers not going to court or regulatory bodies etc to exercise their rights and give up before getting their money back.
I know Megabus were the same at times and people still used and supported them.
Megabus were dreadful in their later years, as was my experience in November/December.
henryb
Member
045 through to Penzance is now online starting in May.. first bus taking over
markymark2000
On Moderation
045 is being temporarily withdrawn from May. It's being replaced by 049/N49. 1 049 & N49 doing Penzance, Newquay and Plymouth then similar to the 045/N45, the other 049 doing Falmouth, Truro and Plymouth then similar to the 045 to London.
henryb
Member
Oh ok so the whole route is only the 049, - will the 045 be a separate addition and then increase in frequency
markymark2000
On Moderation
Yes, it will become 049/N49. The 045 number seems to be being reserved for shorter trips as far as Plymouth. There's so many changes in April and May (around 40 changes to routes that I am aware of so far just over these 2 months! There are more changes coming online nearly daily as well), It's hard to keep up with it all. It looks like Plymouth/Cornwalls timeline will be something like this though:
1st April - 045/N45 operate between 1 and 3 trips daily between Plymouth and London.
4th April - 21st April 045/N45 extra trips for the holidays with 1 bus doing Taunton - London - Plymouth and one bus doing Plymouth-London-Taunton.
15th May - 045 reduces to 1 bus doing Taunton - London - Plymouth and 1 bus doing Plymouth-London-Taunton. This supplements a new 049/N49 linking London to Plymouth but extending 2 buses to Newquay and Penzance and 1 bus to Truro and Falmouth.
From 14th May onwards, the 045 gets a little odd and seems to run sometimes but not all of the time, and different trips. I'm presuming incomplete timetable.
This is not confirmed and things may still change, as I said, trips are being added almost daily.
Is there anyone here who works for First and can share any rollout plan for the network? The job adverts for Truro, Taunton and Slough all say routes start April 2025 and say about links to "Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle". Newcastle & Leeds could be First replacing Berrys on the 078 from early April but links to Manchester don't start until May. This doesn't take into account though
Ahh, it's not listed as 'Falmouth' (only just realised), it's actually 'Penryn', but the stop is Falmouth Uni Penryn Campus.
Below screenshot shows that I have searched Plymouth to Penryn and the stop it comes up with is Falmouth University.
Flixbus does not have a dedicated control room.
YorkRailFan
Established Member
J&B will join the Flixbus network, with 2 vehicles:
www.busandcoachbuyer.com
The cross-Pennine corridor seems to be popular for Flixbus.
J&B Travel partners with FlixBus - Bus & Coach Buyer
FlixBus is announcing a new partnership with Leeds-based J&B Travel. With over 40 years of experience, family-owned J&B Travel will bring two FlixBus-branded vehicles to the network, operating coach services to and from Manchester Airport, Leeds and Liverpool, commencing mid-April. The...
www.busandcoachbuyer.com
The cross-Pennine corridor seems to be popular for Flixbus.
markymark2000
On Moderation
That's really poor for an operator who is about to hit 200 buses on the network.
J&B trips seem to be the following if anyone is interested. Both trips down to start 17th April.
| Operator | J&B | Operator | J&B | J&B | ||
| Route Num | 075 | Route Num | 072 | 072 | ||
| Bradford Interchange | 08:50 | Liverpool One Bus Station | 10:35 | 18:05 | ||
| Leeds Bus Station | 09:35 | Liverpool, Edge Lane | 10:45 | 18:15 | ||
| Sheffield Meadowhall | 10:20 | Manchester Airport | 11:35 | 19:05 | ||
| Nottingham Phoenix Park | 11:20 | Manchester Shudehill | 12:10 | 19:50 | ||
| Leicester Fosse Park | 12:05 | Leeds Bus Station | 13:30 | 21:00 | ||
| Birmingham Summer Row | 13:10 | |||||
| Route Num | 072 | 072 | ||||
| Route Num | 075 | Leeds Bus Station | 06:20 | 14:00 | ||
| Birmingham Summer Row | 15:25 | Manchester Shudehill | 07:40 | 15:20 | ||
| Leicester Fosse Park | 16:35 | Manchester Airport | 08:20 | 16:00 | ||
| Nottingham Phoenix Park | 17:20 | Liverpool, Edge Lane | 09:05 | 16:45 | ||
| Sheffield Meadowhall | 18:20 | Liverpool One Bus Station | 09:20 | 17:00 | ||
| Leeds Bus Station | 19:00 | |||||
| Bradford Interchange | 19:40 |
henryb
Member
Does anyone have ideas of loading levels on these new routes/routes in general
National Express used to offer an hourly service for much of the day Bradford - Leeds - Nottingham (with many continuing to Leicester and Birmingham). They now only have a couple a day. In my experience they were often busy and sometimes duplicated so I'm surprised they haven't built them back up. Presumably Flix sees a gap in the market.J&B will join the Flixbus network, with 2 vehicles:
J&B Travel partners with FlixBus - Bus & Coach Buyer
FlixBus is announcing a new partnership with Leeds-based J&B Travel. With over 40 years of experience, family-owned J&B Travel will bring two FlixBus-branded vehicles to the network, operating coach services to and from Manchester Airport, Leeds and Liverpool, commencing mid-April. The...
The cross-Pennine corridor seems to be popular for Flixbus.
Stan Drews
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They do have a control centre for all their European operations that include those in the UK.
I noticed these two consecutive posts earlier today:
With Flixbus having no dedicated control room, and some of operators not having a big pool of coaches and drivers to draw on, it does make me think that Flixbus doesn't have much resilience if things go wrong.
Isn't that the drawback of their business model?
Flixbus themselves only do sales and marketing.
What is the control center supposed to do when the operator is the one doing the job and not them? Especially when there seems to be no communication between operators and them. (I booked once on FlixBus during storm Cìran, I got news that there was a ban introduced on HGVs that day, and the FlixBus support was fully unaware)
londonteacher
Member
In person they may not be any good but If you message FlixBus via the website in the event of disruption they are very good at arranging things.
They cancelled a Paris to London service and were quick, once contacted, to move me and my empty seat next to me on to the available service with also a full refund due to the long delay (6+) hours.
Stan Drews
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Not sure where this suggestion that FlixBus have no control room has come from, but as stated last night, they do.
Bear in mind their Europe wide operations are considerable, even although their UK operations are still relatively small, although clearly growing.
johncrossley
Established Member
I have hardly ever heard of a National Express cancellation but there have been several mentions of Flixbus cancellations on here, despite running vastly fewer services and only running for a few years in the UK. Are cancellations statistically more likely to happen with Flixbus?
Last edited:
TravelDream
Member
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Doubt there is any data out there to prove it, but Flixbus does seem to have a lot more cancellations.
I think the big issue with them is lack of resilience by Flixbus and their operators.
NX, on the other hand, tends to deal with larger operators who have a greater ability to get a fresh coach/ new driver out.
Plus Flixbus has a European control centre that doesn't seem to want to deal with issues. NX is more hands on.
The UK control centre is supposed to coordinate things when they go wrong.They should have coach operators willing to do the work at short notice .An operation that size should have its own team of controllers
In over 30 years of travelling with National Express, I only ever had 1 cancellation. It was an overnight trip from Cambridge to Stanstead on a quiet night. We were provided with 2 large taxis - those with early morning flights being prioritised in the first taxi.
Three_Counties
Member
I have only had one NX cancellation and was rebooked onto the next coach 2 hours later with no other issue but what I do find is that an overnight direct coach between Yorkshire and London will often be subjected to an unadvertised vehicle swap at Nottingham or Leicester at 0300hrs or similar.
I used Flixbus a few times in their early days of them operating routes within the UK (when they were charging £2 on many trips) and my experiences were pretty dire.
First trip: delays on the M1 made me miss my connecting Flix at London Victoria and because of the pretty much non existence of any way of contacting them in that moment, I was left in the dark about what to do to complete my journey to Cardiff, best I could do for help was make a post in a Flixbus Enthusiasts group on Facebook in the hope that somebody, anybody, could help - managed to get a few answers before my post was deleted with it being an enthusiasts group, after about an hour, my tickets automatically changed to the next journey about an hour later.
Second trip: return of the above from Cardiff, no issues to London Victoria but the London to Leeds leg was dire - first we had to pull into a service station on the M1 to rescue passengers from a broken down Flixbus service, so we ended up with a full coach during the height of covid when passenger capacities were limited for social distancing, so wasn't too impressed at having someone sat next to me with no mask for 4 hours on that journey - additionally due to an incident on the M1, it took an extra 2 hours to reach Leeds.
Third trip: got to Leeds, awaited my service to Birmingham... no coach appeared, leaving us all to figure out what on earth was going on, turned out a contractor was removed or chose to remove themselves from the network which led to cancelled trips, no notice from Flix whatsoever prior to this trip including on the day of travel, we were all having to hammer their customer services for any info, eventually one of us got told the service we were booked on no longer operated - so I had to spend about an hour attempting to figure out what the next steps were going to be, this was an infuriating process contacting them through their website as if you left the page, the chat would close and you'd have to start from the beginning again - I eventually made my way to Birmingham, 3-4 hours later than originally booked.
Fourth trip: York to London with Whippet Coaches I think it was? Had to sit at Foss Park for about an hour waiting on a driver to take over for the remainder of the trip to London, no reason was given for the delay, don't think that driver said anything for the rest of our journey to London.
The frequent rate in which they make changes to services and timetables also didn't give me much confidence either, at least half of those bookings above changed at some point between booking and the date of travel, sometimes your journeys would change by several hours.
Part of me wants to sample some of their offerings again to see what it's like now and check out some of their coaches on the network, but these past examples puts me off that idea, I'd sooner pay the extra money for the speed and convince of a train.
First trip: delays on the M1 made me miss my connecting Flix at London Victoria and because of the pretty much non existence of any way of contacting them in that moment, I was left in the dark about what to do to complete my journey to Cardiff, best I could do for help was make a post in a Flixbus Enthusiasts group on Facebook in the hope that somebody, anybody, could help - managed to get a few answers before my post was deleted with it being an enthusiasts group, after about an hour, my tickets automatically changed to the next journey about an hour later.
Second trip: return of the above from Cardiff, no issues to London Victoria but the London to Leeds leg was dire - first we had to pull into a service station on the M1 to rescue passengers from a broken down Flixbus service, so we ended up with a full coach during the height of covid when passenger capacities were limited for social distancing, so wasn't too impressed at having someone sat next to me with no mask for 4 hours on that journey - additionally due to an incident on the M1, it took an extra 2 hours to reach Leeds.
Third trip: got to Leeds, awaited my service to Birmingham... no coach appeared, leaving us all to figure out what on earth was going on, turned out a contractor was removed or chose to remove themselves from the network which led to cancelled trips, no notice from Flix whatsoever prior to this trip including on the day of travel, we were all having to hammer their customer services for any info, eventually one of us got told the service we were booked on no longer operated - so I had to spend about an hour attempting to figure out what the next steps were going to be, this was an infuriating process contacting them through their website as if you left the page, the chat would close and you'd have to start from the beginning again - I eventually made my way to Birmingham, 3-4 hours later than originally booked.
Fourth trip: York to London with Whippet Coaches I think it was? Had to sit at Foss Park for about an hour waiting on a driver to take over for the remainder of the trip to London, no reason was given for the delay, don't think that driver said anything for the rest of our journey to London.
The frequent rate in which they make changes to services and timetables also didn't give me much confidence either, at least half of those bookings above changed at some point between booking and the date of travel, sometimes your journeys would change by several hours.
Part of me wants to sample some of their offerings again to see what it's like now and check out some of their coaches on the network, but these past examples puts me off that idea, I'd sooner pay the extra money for the speed and convince of a train.