"Student flies from Newcastle to London via Spain because it's cheaper than train"

[roversfan2001]

You guys would make awful clickbait writers though.

"Student gets reasonably priced train tickets and decides cheap flight idea is just a bit silly"

"OMG get cheap travel with this one simple trick! Train companies HATE it!!1!!1"

Sent from my HTC Desire 530 using Tapatalk

 

[AlexNL]

Flying (at least on commercial airlines) ceased to be much fun a fair while ago.

The feeling of liftoff and seeing how everything on the ground gets very small never ceases to amuse me.

 

[furnessvale]

The feeling of liftoff and seeing how everything on the ground gets very small never ceases to amuse me.

The best thing about rail travel is the ability to sit there and moan for an hour when the engine fails mid journey, something not available to airline passengers!

 

[Bantamzen]

It would have been funny if this lad's flight to London had been diverted to somewhere like Birmingham or Manchester......

 

[edwin_m]

The best thing about rail travel is the ability to sit there and moan for an hour when the engine fails mid journey, something not available to airline passengers!

If the engine fails mid journey the plane passengers probably have more important things to do than moaning.

 

[IanD]

It would have been funny if this lad's flight to London had been diverted to somewhere like Birmingham or Manchester......

Or Newcastle

 

[furnessvale]

If the engine fails mid journey the plane passengers probably have more important things to do than moaning.

Exactly!

 

[HaxbyTraveller]

Shouldn't have to spend ages checking fares. Shouldn't have to be concerned at price gouging, greedy, owners who travel everywhere by personal hot air balloon, yes I do mean you Mr Branson (). Shouldn't have to have stupid publicity emphasising just how bad our rail service has been allowed to become. But we do.

 

[roversfan2001]

Shouldn't have to spend ages checking fares. Shouldn't have to be concerned at price gouging, greedy, owners who travel everywhere by personal hot air balloon, yes I do mean you Mr Branson (). Shouldn't have to have stupid publicity emphasising just how bad our rail service has been allowed to become. But we do.

You don't have to spend ages checking fares. However if you go through the effort of looking sometimes you can find a bargain. This student clearly didn't - and ended up flying via a stupid route to get poor quality 'news' outlets to report on it, twisting the statistics to make it sound worse.

 

[al78]

The best thing about rail travel is the ability to sit there and moan for an hour when the engine fails mid journey, something not available to airline passengers!

Air passengers can instead sit there and moan for two hours+ when their flight has been delayed (again).

That is one of the better things about rail travel for me, that even though rail delays can be a nuisance, they are generally small compared to flight delays, and at least by rail I ultimately have a practical option to switch modes of transport in many cases.

 

[jon0844]

But it does make the point that if you're prepared to spend a whole day on the journey there are likely to be cheap options available by rail as well as by air.

If time isn't important, walk, get sponsored on some crowd funding website and earn a few quid!

 

[Darandio]

The BBC have arrived late to the party as usual. I think it also contains new information, i'd never seen the Newcastle to Manchester via Geneva trip mentioned elsewhere.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-40457453

A student discovered it was cheaper to fly from Newcastle to London via Menorca than to take the train.

When Joe Furness, 21, decided on a last-minute trip to see friends, the lowest return rail fare he found was £78.50.

But after an internet search the trainee marine officer found the same journey, including a 12-hour stopover on the Spanish island, for £26.98.

He said it showed train travel in the UK had become "ridiculously expensive".

Mr Furness, from Oldham, is a trainee cadet with shipping firm Maersk and is studying at South Shields Marine College.

As well as the flights, he also spent £7.50 on a hire car, which he slept in, and splashed out on a £4 cocktail - meaning his entire trip was £40 cheaper than taking the train.

Mr Furness admitted the trip was "no good for anyone who needs to do a commute".

"But it does show how cheap it can be to travel and have a bit of fun at the same time," he added.

"I had a great time, saw a festival, drove around the island for a bit and met loads of people.

"Trains in the UK have become ridiculously expensive. I've never once got on a train and got off at the other end thinking I've had value for money."

Mr Furness made a video of his trip, which took a total of 22 hours and consisted of a flight out of Newcastle to Menorca with Thomas Cook on 23 June for £15.99.

His return flight to London Gatwick the next day cost £10.99 with the same airline.

This is not the first time Mr Furness claims to have found cheaper flights than trains. He said he recently travelled from Newcastle to Manchester via Geneva by air at a cost of £39 when the cheapest train ticket he could find would have cost £64.

He added: "I use comparison sites to find the cheapest flight from my departure point to anywhere in the world. Then find the cheapest from there to my destination.

"This time I found it was way cheaper to go via Menorca. It took a lot longer, but I think it's still better than sitting on a train for four hours."

 

[jon0844]

Fair play to people doing this 'for fun'. Even if it only cost a few more quid, it's still pretty good if you get a day in the sun.. or perhaps want to do something to promote yourself (maybe you've got a blog or want more followers on social media).

£7.50 to hire a car? What about petrol (including the likely requirement to fill up the tank before returning it or whatever) and insurance? Would you hire a car and not pay extra to protect yourself (imagine the cost then had he had a bump!).

Plus how much from Gatwick to London?

It's a fun story in its own right without the papers twisting it to make it an attack on the railway, but that's clearly the 'hook' as plenty of people enjoy cheap flights because of special promotions or last minute deals.

Would the papers be bothered that I snagged a week in Las Vegas for £200 some years back? Virgin Atlantic flights + a stay at the Las Vegas Hilton.. and we even got a limo to take us there and back (in LV, not UK). Amazing value and I'm sure I could come up with some example of how it was cheaper to go to Vegas for a week than stay at home (it was!).

 

[michael74]

The feeling of liftoff and seeing how everything on the ground gets very small never ceases to amuse me.

Its not small, its far away.....

 

[duncanp]

And the £78.50 fare from Newcastle to London is a return which drops you off in the city centre.

Whereas the total airfare quoted in the article is a single which conveniently forgets to mention the cost of getting to and from the various airports.

Neither does the article mention the cost of any meals, apart from the cocktail. If you are going to spend 22 hours getting from Newcastle to London, you are presumably going to need something to eat, the cost of which has to be factored in to the decision about which mode of transport to use.

So if he spent £38.48 getting to London, he would presumably have to spend at least another £38.48 getting back to Newcastle, making a total of £76.96, which is not that different from the train fare.

And he also says "...I think it's better than sitting on a train for four hours..."

Well that is his choice, but most trains between Newcastle and London take roughly three hours.

 

[tspaul26]

The best thing about rail travel is the ability to sit there and moan for an hour when the engine fails mid journey, something not available to airline passengers!

Obviously you don't travel with AirAsia: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/25/terrifying-footage-shows-airasia-flight-shaking-returning-airport/amp/

From the Telegraph:

Passengers told to 'say a prayer' after engine in AirAsia plane 'shudders like a washing machine and shuts down'

 

[tbtc]

Ah, but the rail fare doesn't include those add-ons either, so why should we take it into account for air?

The substance of tbtc's original post was that the rail fare may well include those add-ons, as no-one could match the quoted price to any of the bands of Advance fares for that journey

Exactly - as cuccir points out - if you are going to us a "cost of train journey" that doesn't equate to just the Newcastle Central - Kings Cross train ticket (since posters were suggesting that the £78 fare didn't equate directly to any single fare, because you've added on Metro/Tube etc) then it's only fare to do the same to the plane journey.

Flying (at least on commercial airlines) ceased to be much fun a fair while ago.

Sure, but the papers give us the impression that flights are fun - probably because BA/ RyanAir/ EasyJet etc spend lots of money advertising so they want to keep their paymasters happy (since newspapers are more interesting in selling readers to advertisers nowadays than selling journalism to readers).

Or even use the 25% NUS discount on going the whole way from Sunderland to London, making use of the Metro to reach Sunderland. GC do some cheap fares

True - some bargains to be had on GC...

...plus a trip through the majesty of Sunderland station rather than the ugliness of Darlington station (or the horrid view of that ugly cathedral at Durham)

You guys would make awful clickbait writers though.

"Student gets reasonably priced train tickets and decides cheap flight idea is just a bit silly"

"Student breaks Newcastle - London journey at nine intermediate stations to save a fiver - number seven on the list will shock you"

Shouldn't have to spend ages checking fares. Shouldn't have to be concerned at price gouging, greedy, owners who travel everywhere by personal hot air balloon, yes I do mean you Mr Branson (). Shouldn't have to have stupid publicity emphasising just how bad our rail service has been allowed to become. But we do.

£78 isn't a terrible price for a Newcastle - London return fare.

Easy to blame privatisation (and it's excesses) but I really don't think it's an outrageous price for a return distance of almost six hundred miles.

This is a story about the nonsense of air flights rather than trains - I don't want a railway that feels it needs to race to the bottom and compete with Megabus - it's a growing railway with good safety and well remunerated staff - can't we be proud of that without complaining that we aren't bargain basement bottom-of-the-market cost cutters?

And the £78.50 fare from Newcastle to London is a return which drops you off in the city centre.

Whereas the total airfare quoted in the article is a single which conveniently forgets to mention the cost of getting to and from the various airports.

Neither does the article mention the cost of any meals, apart from the cocktail. If you are going to spend 22 hours getting from Newcastle to London, you are presumably going to need something to eat, the cost of which has to be factored in to the decision about which mode of transport to use.

So if he spent £38.48 getting to London, he would presumably have to spend at least another £38.48 getting back to Newcastle, making a total of £76.96, which is not that different from the train fare.

And he also says "...I think it's better than sitting on a train for four hours..."

Well that is his choice, but most trains between Newcastle and London take roughly three hours.

Good points

 

[richw]

(unless he absolutely had to travel at peak time)

Safe to say he probably didn't. He spent roughly 4 hours on a plane, and 12 hours hanging around on a Spanish island.

Now to pick the obvious holes. The train fare is a return fare. The flights one way. How did he get from Gatwick to London? I believe it's a fairly Expensive trip Gatwick to London. Unless he was meeting his mates at Gatwick to fly to somewhere else on a lads holiday?

Someone mentioned above associated costs with the car hire, it appears he hired it and then parked up and slept in it as a cheaper option to hotel room.

 

[jon0844]

£7.50 for a hire car seems amazingly cheap, and surely without insurance/CDW etc.

He said he did drive around a bit, so there's also the petrol and how you return the vehicle is always an issue (or has been for me in the past).

Then, as mentioned, if you're away for that length of time you have to eat/drink. Of course you would anywhere, but it's how you count it as part of your trip or before/after. A longer journey means more food/drink within the trip IYSWIM.

As I said, it's a bit of fun but totally irrelevant for a train vs plane argument. It's probably been a while since a paper did a comparison between a train and buying an old banger to drive instead. Maybe that's next?

 

[edwin_m]

I'm surprised VTEC's PR people haven't jumped on this, pointed out the various flaws people have mentioned here, and finished it with some examples of cheap Advance fares this person could have used instead.

 

[furnessvale]

I'm surprised VTEC's PR people haven't jumped on this, pointed out the various flaws people have mentioned here, and finished it with some examples of cheap Advance fares this person could have used instead.

They probably have.

You can issue all the press releases you want but the media won't print it if it doesn't fit their agenda.

 

[mpthomson]

I'm surprised VTEC's PR people haven't jumped on this, pointed out the various flaws people have mentioned here, and finished it with some examples of cheap Advance fares this person could have used instead.

There is a long accepted view that there are stories that aren't worth commenting on from a corporate PR point of view as to do so only gives them legs.

If they'd refuted the story by giving facts it would have just encouraged someone to attempt to prove them wrong by finding a flight that goes via Guatemala every 7th Thursday or some such, thus creating another click-bait non-news story.

From Virgin's pov, by not giving it the legitimacy of a response everyone will have forgotten about this by the end of the week and life will carry on as normal.

 

[AlterEgo]

I'm surprised VTEC's PR people haven't jumped on this, pointed out the various flaws people have mentioned here, and finished it with some examples of cheap Advance fares this person could have used instead.

Me too.

 

[al78]

Safe to say he probably didn't. He spent roughly 4 hours on a plane, and 12 hours hanging around on a Spanish island.

Now to pick the obvious holes. The train fare is a return fare. The flights one way. How did he get from Gatwick to London? I believe it's a fairly Expensive trip Gatwick to London. Unless he was meeting his mates at Gatwick to fly to somewhere else on a lads holiday?

Someone mentioned above associated costs with the car hire, it appears he hired it and then parked up and slept in it as a cheaper option to hotel room.

I'd missed the bit about the rail fare being return. That is then like comparing apples and oranges. In addition, whilst it may be theoretically possible to get between two UK cities cheaper by flying abroad rather than a direct rail journey, who in practice has the vast amounts of time, patience, and willing to put in the effort required to do this. I could have possibly got from Aviemore to Horsham cheaper by flying from Inverness to Gatwick instead of buying a 1st advance ticket, but I chose the train because in my circumstances it is so much easier it is easily worth paying extra.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The airlines will catch you out, particularly on the return journey where the price will suddenly double once you are committed to specific dates.
It's a minefield.
£15 each way is very much the exception.
They also don't have walk-on fares and have low capacity.
You can always get an off-peak return on rail.