Great Western Coffee Shop

BA has cancelled 10,000 more flights making a total - according to the BBC - of some 30,000 flights this summer.   Most are said to be from London's airports, and short haul.

What could, should, and will surface public transport providers do to encourage the passengers displaced from cancelled flight to travel on their services.

Simpler fares, rather than the present system under which the fare payable is largely considered to be down to chance or luck. And in particular remove punitively high fares for walk up travel on lightly used services.

More reliable train services even in moderately bad weather. Any reasonable person expects disruption in truly extreme weather, that also affects airlines, but we see far to many disruptions under moderately adverse conditions during which roads and airlines operate as normal.

Better trains, long enough and with padded seats, catering and most seats at full size tables.

Tax aviation fuel and spend the money on railways.

Could, should do - proactively  offer the cheapest possible fares, ensure sufficient capacity, run additional services where necessary, make the services reliable without mass cancellations at weekends/ on Sundays for example, remove threat of disruptive strike action for the affected period, think about the bigger picture and how a good experience may attract people to travel by train rather than by air for domestic travel in future, thus helping to secure services and jobs.

Will do - probably none of the above, and blame the Government.

I suspect that what the government will actually do, will be to give some form grant, subsidy, or other bung to the air travel industry. Either directly to the airlines, or indirectly to airports.

The climate emergency is now very last year, the next big ideas are "levelling up" and also "regional connectivity" which may become the new way to justify subsidies for air transport.

I would like to see much greater use of railways instead of short haul air.

We should all remember that many of the problems that are causing all this strife on the airlines are also being felt by the rail industry (and other forms of public transport). 

Put simply, the railways will not be in a position to do much heavy lifting as a result of the current failings of the airlines, and we must expect the number of cancellations and impact of industrial action to likely worsen over the height of summer.

Some of the ideas listed already make perfect sense longer term, but simply aren’t realistic shorter term.

Indeed.  But whilst some of the ideas are not realistic shorter term, others could be possible if the will was there. "Could" being the operative word.  I don't see all the parties coming together and sorting out industrial action. I don't see a straightforward fare system being introduced. Sadly, I would rather expect to see a period of stagnation while we sort out important things like who's the next leader of the Conservative party.

The problems faced by the airline industry are largely due to staffing shortages and surging demand following the COVID pandemic.

I'm not sure that these are the same challenges being felt by the rail industry, especially given the unprecedented amount of taxpayer support it received  (as opposed to other parts of the travel industry) during recent times?

Issues around complex fares, reliability etc have been around for decades, with decades of opportunities to address and resolve them, but effective leadership has been lacking and it's simply been easier to do nothing.

In my opinion the issues faced are very similar.  Airlines were also given huge taxpayer support with the furlough scheme.

The railways are also having to deal with a huge surge in demand at leisure times.

You're missing the point - airlines and other travel companies made colossal losses as a result of COVID and the virtual total cessation of leisure travel - the railways were shielded from this impact thanks to £16 billion from the taxpayer - thousands of jobs were cut in aviation as a result, none needed to be cut by the railway during this period, so this is not a challenge they are facing.

Many of these jobs in aviation/travel have not been (re) filled now that things are opening up as people have found more attractive employment (you may have noticed we actually have a labour shortage and it's a buyers market).

Sure, there is an argument that BA and the rest could/should have anticipated an upturn in demand, however I suspect a lot of their former employees may well now be happier where they are......

Short haul would mean Paris and Prague as opposed to New York and Nairobi. Railways and coaches can take the domestic journeys but there's not much they can do for the majority of short haul; it would require cooperation between rail here, there and probably a few in between, as well as ferries (or Eurostar).

Which? had a piece last weekend entitled "5 exciting European cities you can reach by train in under 7 hours". Four of them were the obvious ones in Greater Flanders, but they also included Bordeaux. I didn't check just how realistic it is to get the two trains at suitable times and do the sprint across Paris in that time, but I guess it can be done if they say so - though probably not when you want to do it. (The article itself (https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/european-train-journeys-under-7-hours-aODnN5T5qUQX?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_campaign=4170597-T_TN_EM_030722&mi_u=213141426&mi_ecmp=T_TN_EM_030722) may or may not be free to view.)

Five Hours 13 minutes for London to Bordeaux according to the website rome2rio (https://www.rome2rio.com/map/London/Bordeaux), just 14 minutes longer than the quickest journey by air. The website is (for those who do not know it) a great way to lose hours of time looking up such matters for the curious and idle!

I certainly agree with that point.

Interestingly, in terms of Eurostar, they were faced with the same situation the airlines were in I believe?

It is free to view. And good news! But by starting from London, they're not counting the journey to get to check in for Eurostar. For long-haul flights, where you'd probably be making your way to Heathrow or Gatwick anyway, that wouldn't matter in terms of comparison, for short-haul most people will be starting from a regional airport. And wherever you start from, my point was that to increase capacity on that route requires (in the case of Bordeaux for instance) Eurostar and SNCF (and ideally all the UK ToCs) to act in concert.

With this "huge surge in demand at leisure times"  Why are GWR REDUCING total capacity and fleet size by scrapping the Castle sets and replacing them with 5 car IETs, thereby increasing the number of half length main line trains.

The train length lottery is a powerful DISENCENTIVE to rail travel, reserving a seat does not help as reservations are voided on half trains.

I’m not aware of any plans to shorten main line trains.  Are you able to provide details?

Shortening main line trains may not be the plan, but would seem to be an unavoidable consequence of reducing the number of IETs available for such services.

If say five 5 car IETs are repurposed for the services at present operated by castles, then that surely means five fewer units available for main line services, and therefore more short trains.

In the absence of any evidence, perhaps we can revisit that if it happens then? 

For the record though, I am very concerned supply won’t be able to meet demand should passenger numbers continue to rocket upwards and the Class 769 programme continues to meander slowly towards disaster.

Perhaps a whole load of TfW Class 150s might come to the rescue next year when they are replaced by new FLIRT’s?

Anyway, what is known is that the DfT have asked/demanded GWR make savings in leasing costs and the Castle Class trains are very costly compared to other trains in the fleet.  It was never intended to be a long term arrangement.