LNER were seriously proposing airline style check-in for rail travel?!

[Gaelan]

Check in for airlines is generally because they need to verify you admissibility to the destination country, have time to load larger bags to the hold and for the pilots to obtain a rough weight of what's on board. None of which are needed for domestic train journeys (yet??)

To be fair, airlines require check-in even for domestic flights without hold luggage.

 

[Meerkat]

We don't really have long distance services as they exist elsewhere.

I honestly cannot see any reason at all for compulsory reservations. A lot of people seem to want them because they are something "proper" railways on the Continent or elsewhere have. They provide no benefits in the British context at all.

No benefit? I would be more likely to shell out to go long distance by train rather than driving if I knew I would have a seat I could get to, could sit without a standee’s bottom next to my head, and was freely able to get to the loo/buffet.
Full and standing intercity trains are horrible even if you have a seat.

 

[JustPassingBy]

Fully agree with the above, feels like being ripped off spending hundreds of pounds, not being able to get a seat and stood crush loaded. Similarly if you do get a seat but are surrounded by crush loaded standing people it's not very pleasant. Similarly being at risk of not fitting on a train and left behind is a mad way to run long distance transport services.

Interestingly, Nightjet have recently introduced more dynamics pricing (=sells the last few tickets at a very expensive price as the airlines do) and one of their justifications was to ensure some availability until the last minute. Obviously it will overall make them much more money too which I'm sure is their main motivation, but it will likely hold out availability longer too.

 

[Benjwri]

To be fair, airlines require check-in even for domestic flights without hold luggage.

Airlines require check in because they still have to check your ID for security reasons on the majority of carriers, and if not still need to know a manifest of whose onboard incase of a crash. They cannot accept walk ups because everyone must legally be seated and have a seatbelt for safety.

Fully agree with the above, feels like being ripped off spending hundreds of pounds, not being able to get a seat and stood crush loaded. Similarly if you do get a seat but are surrounded by crush loaded standing people it's not very pleasant. Similarly being at risk of not fitting on a train and left behind is a mad way to run long distance transport services.

People seem to be saying this is the solution to crush loading, but the solution to crush loading is attracting people to quiet services, which are often expensive peak ones, and actually meeting the demand with capacity. Restricting reservations will just make it difficult to book a journey. It’s also worth thinking about how ECML trains still end up full and standing even when some cannot be booked because their reservations are full. I would wager the majority of extra people are those who have missed their train because of service disruption, this wouldn’t change.

It’s also worth remembering every passenger in those full and standing trains has paid those hundreds of pounds as well, and the DfT will not approve a revenue negative change as the railways lose enough money as it is. For this to be allowed those other passengers fares that are lost would need to be made up for with your fares, so your ticket would become even more expensive.

If you’re willing to pay the hundreds of pounds extra a change like this would cost you on your ticket, just buy a first class ticket and get away from the crowds. Let those of us who need to use the trains and don’t have the money to afford a massive fare increase also continue to use them.

 

[island]

Airlines require check in because they still have to check your ID for security reasons on the majority of carriers

If it was for “security reasons” it would be the same on every carrier and the same IDs accepted, but since it’s actually for revenue protection reasons it varies quite considerably on domestic routes. Aer Lingus and BA for example are very lax on routes within the UK particularly when you have no check in bags.

 

[HSTEd]

No benefit? I would be more likely to shell out to go long distance by train rather than driving if I knew I would have a seat I could get to, could sit without a standee’s bottom next to my head, and was freely able to get to the loo/buffet.
Full and standing intercity trains are horrible even if you have a seat.

How many would shell out for the considerably higher ticket price required to allow this though?

Compulsory reservations throw away revenue that could be had from standees and will thus require ticket prices to be jacked even higher to make up for it. Meanwhile fewer passengers are carried and the railway becomes even less relevant to the population that pays for it (the general taxpaying population).

 

[SussexSeagull]

If you’re willing to pay the hundreds of pounds extra a change like this would cost you on your ticket, just buy a first class ticket and get away from the crowds. Let those of us who need to use the trains and don’t have the money to afford a massive fare increase also continue to use them.

Admittedly it was only a tenner through Seatfrog but I got a first class upgrade from Nottingham to St Pancras last month after a Saturday afternoon football match and first class was as rammed as the rest of the train to the point people with reservations couldn't get on and were left behind and the trolley with drinks and refreshments stood no chance of getting through, which isn't the end of the world but is part of the first class experience.

At the moment we have a situation that encourages reservations yet deals with walk ups and at times like this example it doesn't really work and should concentrate on one or the other.

 

[BlueLeanie]

If it was for “security reasons” it would be the same on every carrier and the same IDs accepted, but since it’s actually for revenue protection reasons it varies quite considerably on domestic routes. Aer Lingus and BA for example are very lax on routes within the UK particularly when you have no check in bags.

Essentially a Passport or Driver's licence at the gate to board a domestic BA flight since 1st September. The CAA updated the rules for domestic flights earlier this year. It's still catching people out.

For UK domestic flights
You do not require a passport to travel within the UK, but you will need to carry one type of photographic ID when travelling with us. Examples include:

• Valid passport
• Valid driving licence, either provisional or full
• Valid EU national identity card
• Valid armed forces identity card
• Valid police warrant card or badge

Children under the age of 16 do not need to show identification when travelling on domestic flights. The adult they are travelling with must travel with photographic identification and be able to confirm their identity.

Children aged 14 and 15 years who are flying alone will need to show identification when travelling on domestic flights. Find more information on the requirements for young flyers travelling alone, including a copy of our consent form.

https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/passports-visas-and-api

This story is all bluster and wind that's been set up to agitate enthusiast on forums. Beyond a non-stop service from an isolated platform at Edinburgh, Leeds, or Kings Cross, this is near enough impossible to implement in the UK. Most small stations in Scotland won't have a member of staff available for the once-a-day station calls by LNER services, and everywhere else is a potential same platform interchange.

 

[Watershed]

The CAA updated the rules for domestic flights earlier this year.

The CAA haven't changed anything; there is still no statutory requirement to produce any form of ID to fly on a domestic flight with hand luggage. Indeed airlines such as Loganair still don't require it unless you are checking in luggage.

Was happened is that the CAA audited BA and found that due to their phenomenally poor IT, they were unable to guarantee that the person who flew was the same person who had checked in luggage. The post-Lockerbie implications of that lapse probably don't need spelling out.

Other airlines are sufficiently competent that they know which passengers have checked in luggage, and can thus limit ID checks to them.

It's still catching people out.

Unsurprising, given that it was a sudden change to a longstanding policy, and in many cases people with existing bookings weren't even notified of the change (which has led to some interesting Involuntarily Denied Boarding situations).

In any event the change has been implemented in the BA's usual disorganised manner, with a non-exhaustive list of acceptable forms of ID that hasn't been properly communicated to gate staff as holders of several of the (less common) forms of ID have been told that only a driving licence or passport will do...

 

[GlitterUnicorn]

That is not a check in, just a ticket check.

It's incredibly inconvenient though! The train can be sitting there for an hour and they'd still not allow "Boarding" until 15 minutes before departure, and make everyone stand in line for the privilege.

 

[PeterC]

Compulsory reservations throw away revenue that could be had from standees and will thus require ticket prices to be jacked even higher to make up for it. Meanwhile fewer passengers are carried and the railway becomes even less relevant to the population that pays for it (the general taxpaying population).

If there are enough mugs willing to pay top price to stand on an inter city journey then fine. If that's what long distance rail is like then I'll stick with the car

 

[flitwickbeds]

It's one of the reasons I refuse to use air transport. With a train all you have to do is get to the station before the train goes. With a plane you have to get to the airport hours in advance in order to waste the time being pointlessly mucked about. For one thing, sod that for a game of soldiers. For another thing, it's a significant part of the reason why air transport within Great Britain isn't actually quicker overall than using the train. Remove that advantage and it sounds like an actual incentive to get more people using planes instead of trains, instead of fewer.

Depends. I used to live in walking distance to Luton Airport. With 40 minute checkins, I could, on paper at least, be taking off about 55 minutes after I left my house and be in the Edinburgh arrivals lounge about 2h10m after closing my front door. Even if I was at Luton Airport 2 hours before the flight, that's still a total journey time of 3h30.

The train equivalent would be taxi to Luton Airport Parkway (5 mins), minimum 30 minute journey time to St Pancras, walk to King's Cross (5 mins) and then at least 4 hours on a train, plus waiting/connecting time. Call it a minimum of 4h45m, which gives me an hour and a quarter to travel between the airport and Waverley station for the plane to still beat it even under the 2 hour checkin version.

Well I would go back to my house and take the car to Wolverhampton and be done with it.

Passengers aren't captive to the railway, other transport methods are available. If the railway doesn't want the passengers the motorway system will hoover them up.

If you're privileged enough to have a vehicle, driving license and insurance, sure!

 

[Bletchleyite]

If there are enough mugs willing to pay top price to stand on an inter city journey then fine. If that's what long distance rail is like then I'll stick with the car

Best way to deal with this is to publish train length and usual loading (and actual loading once the train has started) on journey planners and timetables. The Swiss have done this for years. Then if it's important to you to avoid busy trains you can.

 

[HSTEd]

If you're privileged enough to have a vehicle, driving license and insurance, sure!

8 in 10 households have access to a car, and a disproportionate fraction of those who don't will either be too poor to travel by rail at all or will be living in London.

I'd wager that the median rail user is significantly wealthier than the median car owner although I'm not sure if a dataset to check that actually exists. Anyone know?

Best way to deal with this is to publish train length and usual loading (and actual loading once the train has started) on journey planners and timetables. The Swiss have done this for years. Then if it's important to you to avoid busy trains you can.

Given this data is recorded anyway for statistical purposes it's probably not impossible to mark trains with a value based on average peak loading as a fraction of nominal seat capacity.

EDIT:
2021 Census in England and Wales gives slightly different figures to the NTS UK figures, about 76.7% of households [in England and Wales] have at least one car or van, increaisng to ~79.7% outside of London.

NTS does suggest that, in 2019, the average amount of surface rail mileage made by the highest income quintile was almost double that of the second highest income quintile and five times the lowest. [1406 vs 750 for 2nd and then 280 for lowest].
The corresponding value for cars (including both driver and passenger figures) was about 6864 vs 3024 for highest and lowest quintiles respectively.


So surface rail mileage does seem more concentrated in the higher income brackets than car mileage.
Higher income people do seem more likely to drive alone though, in the lowest quintile driver and passenger mileage are about equal, in the top quintile driver is 2.5x passenger mileage.

EDIT #2:
The 2022 figures show a major drop in rail travel in the top income quintile (I assume the death of commuting in the South east), but the figures are still somewhat more extreme for rail than car ownership. (~3.5-3.0x vs 2.5x)
Although the lowest surface rail travel is now seen in the second lowest income quintile rather than the lowest, the bottom four brackets all remain far below the top one.

 

[Krokodil]

No benefit? I would be more likely to shell out to go long distance by train rather than driving if I knew I would have a seat I could get to, could sit without a standee’s bottom next to my head, and was freely able to get to the loo/buffet.
Full and standing intercity trains are horrible even if you have a seat.

And yet there are clearly enough people prepared to tolerate the conditions that said trains are full and standing that the railway makes money from carrying more passengers than it has seats for. Until we see a decent capacity uplift on intercity services (HS2 done properly, decent length trains on XC etc.) then nothing will change. Rationing the currently available capacity so that there are no standees is impractical and would just result in higher fares.

 

[DanNCL]

None of the European compulsory reservation operators do waitlists or standby. That's a US airline/Indian railways practice. Even European airlines don't do it.

British Airways do both wait lists and standby but neither are open to the general public. It's mostly non-revenue passengers who can use them (staff and some executive club redemption passengers) but there's limited circumstances where revenue passengers can use them too, usually after a cancellation or missed connection at Heathrow.
Standby is also used when overbookings happen, those who they intend to bump off the flight get put on standby for the same flight and still go to the gate so that if enough people don’t turn up they’re there at the gate and can still get on - that happened to me a couple of months ago, fortunately I did get on.

Airlines require check in because they still have to check your ID for security reasons on the majority of carriers, and if not still need to know a manifest of whose onboard incase of a crash. They cannot accept walk ups because everyone must legally be seated and have a seatbelt for safety.

The bit about walkups isn't strictly true. BA have always accommodated walk ups to some extent, to what extent that is has varied over the years. At present you can turn up at the airport without a booking up to an hour before the flight leaves and if there's space on the flight you want to travel on you can pay for it there and then at the airport, have your documents checked and go through to departures for the flight. You’d be surprised how many people do that, especially on domestic routes.

Pre-Lockerbie BA had an offer on some domestic routes (iirc Heathrow to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester) where anyone could turn up (with as much luggage as they liked!) without a booking 10 minutes before departure and be guaranteed to fly, if there were more passengers at the gate than there were seats on the aircraft they'd operate a duplicate flight. There was always an aircraft on standby at Heathrow for that purpose, often Concorde which meant there were multiple occasions where a very small number of walk up economy class passengers were flown to Scotland on an empty Concorde! There was at least one instance of a 747 being flown to Scotland just for a single digit number of walk up economy passengers too.

That obviously wouldn’t work on the railway, even if there was a spare train for excess passengers pathing it would be a non starter.

The CAA haven't changed anything; there is still no statutory requirement to produce any form of ID to fly on a domestic flight with hand luggage. Indeed airlines such as Loganair still don't require it unless you are checking in luggage.

Was happened is that the CAA audited BA and found that due to their phenomenally poor IT, they were unable to guarantee that the person who flew was the same person who had checked in luggage. The post-Lockerbie implications of that lapse probably don't need spelling out.

Other airlines are sufficiently competent that they know which passengers have checked in luggage, and can thus limit ID checks to them.

BA's IT system has nothing to do with why the CAA made the ruling that they did. BA’s IT system is as capable as any other UK airline’s IT system of complying with CAA legislation and staff are thoroughly trained before they’re allowed to use it unsupervised - I have first hand experience of using the system and lets just say it’s not very user friendly! But it does what it’s designed to do.

There's two ways to ensure that the passenger boarding is the same one who checked the bag without requiring them to bring physical ID - one method is to use biometrics (the equipment for which is provided by the airport not the airline), the other is to have the same staff do both check in and boarding and therefore recognise the passenger who checked the bag when they board (and have the bag offloaded if they don't board). The latter method can only be relied upon for very small aircraft ie a Twin Otter and even then only at very small airports ie Barra, for larger aircraft and airports the only option is biometrics as staff can't reasonably be expected to remember the faces of 100+ people. The ruling against BA was made because they were relying on the staff recognising people at airports that don't have biometrics equipment. BA would have been permitted to implement the same policy as Loganair but instead chose to implement the policy used by easyJet and Ryanair.

Why the CAA took until this year to make that ruling I don't know, they'd been aware of the issue for well over a decade.