East Coast November Advances

[leyscjd]

East Coast scrapped the lowest pricing tier two weeks ago and have now gone a step further by reducing further quotas at what was the 2nd lowest tier. As an example, here is a summary £15 availability on London-Newcastle singles for the week released today (Sat 03 Nov-Fri 09 Nov):

Saturday: 0615 and 1730 only
Sunday: 1830, 2000, 2100 and 2200
Mon-Thu: 0730, 1030, 1230, 1330, 1430, 2000, 2100 and 2200
Fri: 2100 and 2200 only

(No doubt some of these quotas will be around 3 or 4-by the time I finish the post some may well have sold out!)

This represents a severe tightening compared to previous weeks and considerably less than even during the Olympic period.

Bearing in mind there are no school holidays in November and it's one of the quietest months of the year for long-distance travel, what are they playing at? £15 is great value for 280 miles but will their next step be to scrap this?

It's completely justified to have zero quotas for lower price fares on Friday and Sunday afternoons when trains are always busy. But particularly on Monday-Wednesdays and Saturday afternoons, many EC trains are not well-loaded.

No doubt when they realise how how much spare capacity exists as a result of drastic tightening of Advance quotas, they will release thousands of promotional tickets, either as a 'Flat Fare' offer via their website or through local newspaper-based promotions. But that is hardly fair on people who are tricked into buying 3 months in advance to get the best deal.

Even during the Olympics, apart from predictable morning and late evening flows into and out of London, the usual Friday/Sunday spikes and summer loadings on Aberdeen/Inverness workings, many trains had hundreds of empty seats.

Sadly East Coast's grasp of yield management has fallen to a new low and their quiet trains are set to be even quieter this autumn.

 

[Max]

I too have noticed a draconian tightening of AP quotas recently by EC and simply assumed it was a temporary thing for the Olympics. However, when booking some tickets for my mum and sister to London for November a few days ago, the prices were unbelievable. They went for Hull Trains instead which only cost them £15 for both on the 0825 from Hull, a ticket on East Coast at a similar time would have cost more than double this.

 

[All Line Rover]

£15 is remarkably cheap. For London to Carlisle (a comparable journey albeit with less frequent trains), the cheapest available fare is £41.50 (unless you fancy leaving at 05:39 in the morning) or £68 if you can't leave London until after 13:30. Realistically most people on this route will buy an Off-Peak Return (which has lenient restrictions) rather than an Advance.

Most other London to Newcastle fares are £35.65, which admittedly is a little steep considering the high frequency of services along this route. £25 would seem more reasonable.

 

[Simon11]

I'm not sure how you describe ec yield management to go to a new low......Surely the yield department are more keen to make more money with higher yields than provide people with very very cheap seats.

Additonally ec may be changing its yield management polices with recent poor revenue figures.