They've been setting their trains to compulsory reservation for quite some time now. It's a pain because it blocks the sales flexible tickets in certain circumstances, but it's not being enforced on the ground, so to speak, so if you do have a flexible ticket you can use their trains without any problem.I notice compulsory reservations now apply to all Avanti services.
What happens if you have an open ticket and decide to use Avanti, would you be allowed to?
To be clear they are not allowed to enforce such a thing, as part of their contract they have to accept passengers with walk-up tickets so in no circumstances would they be able to actually block you from boarding a train.They've been setting their trains to compulsory reservation for quite some time now. It's a pain because it blocks the sales flexible tickets in certain circumstances, but it's not being enforced on the ground, so to speak, so if you do have a flexible ticket you can use their trains without any problem.
Coach C is always unreserved regardless of lengthI thought AWC had one carriage on all the Pendos that has completely unreserved seating, normally coach U on 11 car sets, & coach C on 9 car sets?
C has the shop, it's definitely not uncommon for Avanti staff to be right next to it (and be able to be overheard from the nearby seats)Is it C or G that has the shop in? Because, whilst it's unreserved, you might find a number of seats are taken up by Avanti staff spreading out and enjoying the ride instead of doing their jobs...
It is unreserved, at least on the ones I've been on.Coach G might also be unreserved on refurbished units but idk
As I understand it.I notice compulsory reservations now apply to all Avanti services.
What happens if you have an open ticket and decide to use Avanti, would you be allowed to?
I don't think the wording associated with the "compulsory reservations" flag in the timetable data will change. There is a legitimate case for having such a flag for trains such as the Caledonian Sleeper where reservations are indeed compulsory. But CS handle that in a reasonable manner, as you can buy tickets 12 months in advance.Isn't it about time the wording was amended?
Indeed. In my mind, the correct way of handling this would have been to reallocate the "reservations recommended" flag to this purpose. After all, very few people read paper timetables anymore!Perhaps they need to introduce an additional flag so that we have one for "reservations compulsory" and one for "reservations aren't compulsory, but we are pretending that they are"
Perhaps they need to introduce an additional flag so that we have one for "reservations compulsory" and one for "reservations aren't compulsory, but we are pretending that they are"
Indeed. In my mind, the correct way of handling this would have been to reallocate the "reservations recommended" flag to this purpose. After all, very few people read paper timetables anymore!
Avanti's use of the "reservations compulsory" flag does cause problems, because it entirely prevented the sale of certain tickets at times. In some cases, they just never released the reservations for certain trains even though they did run, that's how I once ended up being one of 2 passengers on an avantie London-Glasgow train. Now that Avanti is back to some reliability, they should drop the "reservations compulsory" flag. LNER should have stopped using it tooPost COVID the reason it's been retained is so they can control at an individual level which trains are on sale. Obviously nothing stops you buying a walk up ticket from a booking office, non-planner TVM or for another train, but it prevents the false expectations of picking a given train with an Anytime then finding they never had any intention of running it at all. With such a heavily disrupted service for a long time after COVID this was quite useful for Avanti at least.
My suggestion would be that the planner accreditation rules should change so the barely-used Reservations Recommended flag can be repurposed for this end. Or a new flag could be added of "do not sell without a reservation".
It is unhelpful that it means different things in different places - if you turn up to the Caledonian Sleeper for the seats without one you'll at best get moaned at or at worst be turned away.
Great minds/fools
That's what the "reservations compulsory" flag does.Or a new flag could be added of "do not sell without a reservation".
That's what the "reservations compulsory" flag does.
Last I heard that was the plan.Perhaps they need to introduce an additional flag so that we have one for "reservations compulsory" and one for "reservations aren't compulsory, but we are pretending that they are"
Maybe another flag to distinguish between trains where you can actually reserve a specific seat, and trains which just have counted place reservations?
In fairness interrail users will spend money on reservations anyway when we know that you can get free reservations through gwr or lnerAt present the same flag is being used for those two rather different meanings, and it does confuse people (e.g. InterRail users are spending money on unnecessary reservations via their app).
In fairness interrail users will spend money on reservations anyway when we know that you can get free reservations through gwr or lner
Coach G is unreserved on refurbished 11 car sets. So basically you have three unreserved coaches on most 11 cars but only one (Coach C) on 9 cars.
Because I cant book in advance due to medical reasons I'm left to find a table in one coach if its a 9 car set.
Exactly, in BR days there were two different styles of "R" symbol used in the all-line timetable: one that meant reservation compulsory, and one that meant reservation strongly recommended.Indeed. In my mind, the correct way of handling this would have been to reallocate the "reservations recommended" flag to this purpose. After all, very few people read paper timetables anymore!
Exactly, in BR days there were two different styles of "R" symbol used in the all-line timetable: one that meant reservation compulsory, and one that meant reservation strongly recommended.
As I recall under BR you could still travel on a compulsory reservation train without a reservation if there were seats available but they didn't allow standing on them.
They also sometimes used to do that for ordinary Intercity trains at busy times, for example around Christmas, Easter and the late August bank holiday. I remember seeing leaflets saying that a limited number of boarding cards would be made available for each train for passengers without reservations, but such passengers could not be guaranteed a seat.For APT they used to issue boarding cards for any unreserved seats.
Oh true, that is pretty awful.Yes, true, but the point is that they don't need them and this misuse of the flag convinces them into thinking they do.