Why no tickets available Preston-London late March?

[kristiang85]

I'm needing a one-way ticket from Preston to London on the afternoon Sunday 29th March, and on looking at the Avanti site they all seem sold out?

Is this a website error? (if I click earlier or later times, it still says the same). I was expecting to find many advances available considering I'm flexible that day, let alone at least some tickets, but for everything to be 'sold out' seems impossible, and the booking window is open until late April according to National Rail?

I know there are some indirect options, but I really would prefer direct if possible (as I then need to go from London to Basingstoke, which I'm doing as I want to avoid Cross Country).

Thanks in advance for any info... espeicially if I'm missing something obvious

 

[CarrotPie]

I don't know why, but I can report that there are WTT schedules for those trains on that day (example) and the tickets are displayed on the National Rail website (see below). However, when I try to purchase them, it insists on transferring me (which doesn't work very well) to AWC's website, which then tells me that "those fares aren't available".

 

[kristiang85]

Ok so it's not me being dim then! Very odd?

 

[Deerfold]

LNER seems happy to sell them.

 

[Adam Williams]

These trains are being marked as IsTrainClosed: true (and yet IsSoldOutService: false) in the Pico for UK API response.

I have genuinely no idea what a train being "closed" is supposed to mean, or what data source is being used to determine that - but I think that's what's causing it to show up like this. I've looked for engineering work sales suppressions and I can't find anything notable. If I had to speculate, I'd guess that Avanti have some controls (for their own retail channels only?) that allow setting trains to not be retailable.

These services are reservable in the industry's reservation system, RARS, for ticket type SVS (Off-Peak S).

tl;dr No idea wtf they're doing.

 

[philjo]

The ECML is closed between York and Newcastle that weekend, so maybe the reservations are assuming a large increase in passengers to/from Carlisle and Scotland on those dates?

 

[kristiang85]

Ok this all seems rather odd. Shall I just bite the bullet and book a cheap indirect route rather than risk waiting and missing out on Avanti's advances?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Feb 2026 ==

LNER seems happy to sell them.

Oh sorry, I somehow missed this last night - I'll look at their site then.