Misleading advertisment of Eastern Airways

[evil_hippo]

I noticed the following advert on the platform of Central station metro that I found incredibly misleading:

Newcastle to London by rail: 2 hours 46 minutes
Newcastle to London by Eastern Airways: 85 minutes

This is a complete nonsense. Sure, you're only spending 85 minutes in the air, however:

Metro to Airport: 20 minutes
Check in (assuming no wait for metro or transfer from metro to terminal): 1 hour (at least)
Flying time: 85 minutes
Tube to Central London: 40 minutes

Total: 3 hours 25 minutes. And that excludes a lot of things such as walking through heathrow, so really 4 hours at the very least.

What's more, there are only 4 flights per day on that particular airline which means you're far less likely to have one at a convenient time.

Plus, is it me or is flying a whole load more stress and involve plane toilets, seatbelts, scanners, x-rays, wondering whther your luggage has gone to Brazil, etc. etc.

 

[Tom B]

Doesn't surprise me - just serves to heighten the publics mis-impression that air is superior to rail...

 

[LucaZone]

Also notice the clever way to make the flight time seem smaller. The airline journey is displaced in minutes only, while the rail time is in hours and minutes. Its the same tactic used by many retailers "New Sony Blah, under £200" - yeah £1 under! £199. or car sellers who say the price in numbers to avoid mentioning the word 'thousand'.

So the above advert should be displayed as : Air 85mins / Rail 166mins or as Air 1hr 25m / Rail 2hr 46m

 

[yorkie]

I guess they do a similar fudge when comparing fares? They'll compare the all-inclusive city centre to city centre rail fare for any train, with a specific plane ticket that has an availability of 2 seats per flight on Mondays when there is a full moon, which excludes baggage handling fees, tax, booking fees, and other fees.