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Plymouth - Newcastle on XC direct

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142094

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Looking at advances for Plymouth - Newcastle direct on a weekday with XC, a load of the days I am looking at in both September and October are £54.45 (YP), even booking right up to most recently released dates. I know the lowest priced XC advances are normally very hard to come by in the first place, but with nearly all the ones I'm seeing being the same price, it is leading me to think that they haven't released the full quota yet (or they've been bought rather quickly).

For a sample day, have a look at Wednesday 17th Oct, both the 13.23 and 15.23 are £54.45.
 
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cuccir

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It's possible that the headline £21.10 price is only available via London, rather than direct (that is, as an East Coast Advance and not an XC advance).

It's also possible that only one or two of the headline lowest price tickets are available on each train, or are only sometimes available. In truth the release process of Advance tickets is a bit of mystery!
 

142094

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It does seem that with other TOCs the cheapest advances are usually quite easy to buy when booking far in advance, but not with XC.
 

yorkie

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I've never seen XCs cheapest Advance fares released for any journey that I've ever wanted to do. I am sure they must release the odd one or two, but they've eluded me.
 

calc7

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As they don't have to release them, maybe they are choosing not to.
 

142094

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If I do this trip I'll probably split along the way, seems to be offering a saving when splitting at Birmingham. Either that or use FGW to London and East Coast from there.
 

DaveNewcastle

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As they don't have to release them, maybe they are choosing not to.
That is my understanding.

Unless stated/advertised otherwise, the Company is under no obligation to release Advance tickets at the headline low prices on every service, on every day, and unless stated/advertised otherwise, they are under no obligation to release any more than one Advance ticket at the headline low prices (if a plural is used in the advertising, that does not imply that more than one must be available on the same train or even on the same date).
 

Solent&Wessex

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I've never seen XCs cheapest Advance fares released for any journey that I've ever wanted to do. I am sure they must release the odd one or two, but they've eluded me.

Me too!

I tend to find nowadays it is normally always cheaper, sometimes quicker and generally more pleasant (nicer more comfortable rolling stock, lack of smelly voyager toilets, more opportunity to purchase a cup of tea) to travel via London.

 

Drsatan

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A few months ago in his RAIL column he published an internal memo from XC which had been leaked, stating that as policy lowest-priced AP fares are not to be released for ANY train after 16:00 Monday-Friday and on Sunday afternoons.

Explains why XC never offer the cheapest AP fare for any particular train!
 

142094

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The services that I was looking at were the HSTs, either straight through to Newcastle or the last one which goes as far as Leeds. It does seem easier to get two cheap advances frrom Plymouth to Pad, then King's Cross to Newcastle.
 

bb21

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I have said this before and will say it again. XC do not always release the cheapest tiers of their APs initially. On several occasions I have seen cheaper APs appear 2/3 weeks later, approximately 9/10 weeks before travel.
 
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