Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
From https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...on-scotrail-trains.301134/page-3#post-7755621
It's been the case for years and I think just harks back (in the case of the 16-25 not allowing walk ups in particular) to when 1st was primarily a business product and was priced accordingly, and they didn't want people to be heavily discounting it for business travel when that was the norm. It was in essence a way to keep it as a leisure product. In those days stuff like Virgin Value First (precursor of Advance fares) was certainly a leisure product, pretty much all business travellers would just purchase a First Open Return on the day using their corporate credit card. While BR had no APEX first class products at all, it was full fare or Standard in most cases.
However things have now changed, with almost no businesses permitting first class (and those which do typically only permitting it for senior management, basically all of whom aren't aged 16 to 25) with first class primarily a leisure and self upgrade product, and so I'd say it has served its purpose and should be included on all Railcards. Perhaps the minimum fare could be higher for first class, though, where applicable, the standard 1.5-1.6 multiplier would probably make sense as that pretty much is the multiplier from Standard Anytime to First Anytime in most cases.
It's been the case for years and I think just harks back (in the case of the 16-25 not allowing walk ups in particular) to when 1st was primarily a business product and was priced accordingly, and they didn't want people to be heavily discounting it for business travel when that was the norm. It was in essence a way to keep it as a leisure product. In those days stuff like Virgin Value First (precursor of Advance fares) was certainly a leisure product, pretty much all business travellers would just purchase a First Open Return on the day using their corporate credit card. While BR had no APEX first class products at all, it was full fare or Standard in most cases.
However things have now changed, with almost no businesses permitting first class (and those which do typically only permitting it for senior management, basically all of whom aren't aged 16 to 25) with first class primarily a leisure and self upgrade product, and so I'd say it has served its purpose and should be included on all Railcards. Perhaps the minimum fare could be higher for first class, though, where applicable, the standard 1.5-1.6 multiplier would probably make sense as that pretty much is the multiplier from Standard Anytime to First Anytime in most cases.