Not sure if it’s a quirk of the Avanti app / website whereby it wrongly thinks certain trains are going to be Voyagers rather than a Pendo, but we’ve noticed this past week that when trying to book for the next few commutes that Standard Premium has been removed from the 0740 and 0745 departures to Euston from Coventry, which are always (historically) Pendos. When my better half travelled in last week she did notice that the SP antimacassars had been taken off in coach H and it was completely void of passengers. Normally it’s 3/4 full as a minimum.
One thing I have noticed is that on certain services, Standard Premium does not exist on them due to them effectively being at peak times.
These are
Southbound -
04:28 Glasgow Central - Euston
06:31 Manchester - Euston
06:55 Manchester - Euston
07:15 Manchester - Euston
06:43 Liverpool - Euston
06:45 Wolverhampton (07:17 Birmingham) - Euston
07:21 Birmingham NS - Euston
Northbound -
16:30 Euston - Glasgow
17:30 Euston - Glasgow
18:53 Euston - Manchester
On all these services, Coach H is also marked as First Class, presumably to appease the business market in the mornings. But do Avanti really think they are going to be able to fill three coaches worth of First Class?
Looking for tomorrow morning, the majority of these services seem to be quite light loaded in First.
What is a bit inconsistent is some Southbound peak time services convey no Standard Premium, but there’s nothing going north (Birmingham or Liverpool).
It’s worth noting that this doesn’t apply on Fridays.
If the service doesn’t show with SP in the mornings, it’s likely one of the services mentioned above (with the 07:40 from Coventry being the 06:45 from Wolverhampton and the 07:45 being the 07:21 from New Street)
The source was doing dummy bookings via the Avanti app.