LNER King's Cross - Skipton Advances

[Fuzzytop]

I'm a regular on the LNER train from Peterborough to Skipton (an once-daily extension of their King's Cross - Leeds). This has usually been very reasonably priced, even on Friday evening.

It's still good value for journeys between now and Christmas. For next Friday, for example, I can book a Standard Advance for £21 or First Advance for £40.25 using my railcard.

For Fridays in January, the pricing seems to have shot up. On 10 January for example, there's one remaining Standard Advance for £31.70 and no First Advances at all. A glance at the seating plan shows a 9-car Azuma carrying fresh air.

Other weekdays in January seem to be unaffected: just Friday services seem to have had their Advance quota completely throttled.

Are LNER trying it on?

 

[westv]

I asked a similar question about tickets in Jan Mondays on the 07:00 Hull to London.
I was told less seats.

 

[deltic]

I'm a regular on the LNER train from Peterborough to Skipton (an once-daily extension of their King's Cross - Leeds). This has usually been very reasonably priced, even on Friday evening.

It's still good value for journeys between now and Christmas. For next Friday, for example, I can book a Standard Advance for £21 or First Advance for £40.25 using my railcard.

For Fridays in January, the pricing seems to have shot up. On 10 January for example, there's one remaining Standard Advance for £31.70 and no First Advances at all. A glance at the seating plan shows a 9-car Azuma carrying fresh air.

Other weekdays in January seem to be unaffected: just Friday services seem to have had their Advance quota completely throttled.

Are LNER trying it on?

How busy is the train when you use it ? If it fills up then no point in selling cheap tickets

 

[tom73]

Why does the train have to be direct? If you change at Leeds, you can do it for £10.75 or £14.15 with Railcard

 

[Kite159]

How busy is the train when you use it ? If it fills up then no point in selling cheap tickets

I would imagine if it fills up at Leeds with Skipton bound passengers, then LNER don't get much from the ticket revenue under ORCATS, so selling advances is one easy way to getting more income from running that train.

For a standard Skipton - Leeds day return, I would imagine 99.5% of the revenue goes to Northern with a tiny 0.5% to LNER. Likewise for the once a day Bradford Forster Square train.

 

[Fuzzytop]

How busy is the train when you use it ? If it fills up then no point in selling cheap tickets

I'd say it's one of LNER's better loaded West Yorks services, at least as far as Newark, but not exceptionally so. The morning service from Skipton to London is far busier.

I would imagine if it fills up at Leeds with Skipton bound passengers, then LNER don't get much from the ticket revenue under ORCATS, so selling advances is one easy way to getting more income from running that train.

Interestingly I've just looked at splitting the tickets on the 10 January Skipton service. From Peterborough as far as Leeds, it's £9.50 standard (£23.10 First) with a railcard.

That means a £22.20 surcharge for Leeds - Skipton leg when booking as a through ticket! (An Anytime single with railcard is £6, by comparison.)

The cynic in me wonders if they're using this as an excuse to cut the Skipton direct service in the evening, as people will just change at Leeds (or split tickets there) and reduce the passenger numbers?

 

[yorkie]

The difference is even greater from London; accredited ticket splitting sites are actually offering three tickets, saving around £30.

XC deliberately price through fares higher in order to maximise revenue, so maybe it's a deliberate tactic by LNER? Most people will just pay the higher fare on LNER direct. Only price sensitive people will use split ticketing sites, and those people may not have travelled if the combination wasn't cheaper, so it's a win-win situation for train companies when it comes to yield management techniques.

 

[Kite159]

I'd say it's one of LNER's better loaded West Yorks services, at least as far as Newark, but not exceptionally so. The morning service from Skipton to London is far busier.


Interestingly I've just looked at splitting the tickets on the 10 January Skipton service. From Peterborough as far as Leeds, it's £9.50 standard (£23.10 First) with a railcard.

That means a £22.20 surcharge for Leeds - Skipton leg when booking as a through ticket! (An Anytime single with railcard is £6, by comparison.)

The cynic in me wonders if they're using this as an excuse to cut the Skipton direct service in the evening, as people will just change at Leeds (or split tickets there) and reduce the passenger numbers?

Wasn't there something similar a couple weeks ago when passengers couldn't get advances on the new Lincoln trains (advances available to Newark but not beyond) but could get advances on other Kings Cross - Lincoln services when they needed to change at Newark?

 

[47271]

They're all over the place with their pricing. I started the thread below over a week ago and now I see that Christmas advances are available north of Edinburgh and they're offering refunds to those who overpaid. All very well, but this nonsense has wasted several hours of my time over the past few weeks. I'm tempted to travel without a ticket one day and present them with a bill for my labour to even things out.

Only joking before anyone gets on their high horse...

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/no-lner-advances-north-of-edinburgh.194960/#post-4294519

 

[30907]

Much the same is happening with Shipley - no First Advances from London on the 1833, which is our train of choice (especially if the Chef is actually onboard!) for speed and convenience. Yet there are from PBO!
Some of it may be due to uncertainty about loadings and stock diagrams, but not all?
BTW the Skipton tonight was reported +40 ex Leeds because of a problem uncoupling - so presumably 2×5. Is it a planned split? - seems a bit pointless as Leeds has no particular use for a 5-car then!

 

[ant_bingley]

BTW the Skipton tonight was reported +40 ex Leeds because of a problem uncoupling - so presumably 2×5. Is it a planned split? - seems a bit pointless as Leeds has no particular use for a 5-car then!

I think it is, 1 x 5 goes to Skipton and the other goes to Neville Hill. There's something about this on a recent nodrog video (start around 16 minutes in)..