Airlines Driven Out of Skies by Virgin Trains’ High Frequency Service

LONDON - The Manchester to London rail route continues to flourish with journeys increasing by 12.6% over the last six months despite the recession.

Increasingly passengers are choosing rail over air for their journeys between two of the country’s biggest commercial hubs. Latest figures from the Civil Aviation Authority show that operator Virgin Trains has now captured 77% of the rail/air sector compared with 75% one year ago. Similarly on the London to Glasgow route despite slower schedules than air, Virgin Trains has seen its market share move from 9% to 11%.

Just yesterday airline VLM will withdraw its Manchester - London City service joining the list of those air operators who have reduced their domestic services over the last few years as rail becomes the preferred public transport mode of choice for journeys of around 200 miles.

With the pull out by VLM air services between Manchester and the Capital now total just 17 in both directions daily compared with Virgin Trains who are now operating over 90.

Graham Leech, Virgin Trains’ Commercial Director said today: “We are quite literally driving airlines from the skies on short haul domestic routes at the same time as our own services become faster and more frequent. Business travellers can now enjoy excellent mobile phone reception and reliable wi-fi on all our Pendolinos while leisure travellers will benefit this year from over a million Advance tickets across our network at under GBP12.00.”

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Virgin Trains is the brand name of Virgin Rail Group. We have operated the West Coast passenger train franchise since 1997; the current franchise runs to March 2012.

Virgin Rail Group is owned 51 percent by Virgin Group and 49 percent by Stagecoach.

Virgin Trains has been listed as the Best Train Operator in a survey by the Institute of Customer Service and has been voted Best Rail Company by Travel Weekly magazine and Best UK Domestic Train Service by Business Traveller magazine.

Source: Virgin Trains

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