YOUR exclusive article and leader on the subject of comparative air and rail fares make good reading but, as always with such studies, run the risk of comparing apples with pears ("Air fares to London cheaper than rail tickets", The Herald, April 16).
While it may be cheaper to fly to London, who, apart from the most avid plane spotter, has Heathrow, Stansted or Gatwick as their final destination? The same might be said about trainspotters going to Euston or Kings' Cross, but at least these stations are a lot closer to the places where the majority of people from Glasgow or Edinburgh want to be in central London.
Forgetting about exorbitant taxi fares, and, excluding the frequent Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted Express train services, the National Express coach services from these airports to central London shows the following one-way fares: from Heathrow £15, from Luton £10, from Gatwick and Stansted £6.50 (plus £1 booking fee).
We are therefore talking about an extra £14, at least, to get to and from central London. Adding this to the air fare makes rail cheaper in more than half the examples, and that's before looking at how people get to and from Glasgow or Edinburgh airports. As an example, for the first weekend of your study, a space in the long-term car park would cost £31 at Glasgow Airport and £33 at Edinburgh.
Iain Maclean,
25 Gartconnell Road, Bearsden.
WE take issue with your assertion that air fares between London and Scotland are "nearly always" cheaper than train tickets.
Without seeing the details of the survey mentioned in the report it is difficult to establish the basis of this claim. However, a glance at publicly available ticket websites is all it takes to contradict it.
Travelling from Glasgow to London next week, for example, on Wednesday, April 24, it is cheaper to get the train than fly. The National Rail website offers the lowest fare as Virgin Trains' 6.40pm service departing Glasgow, at £29.50. There are also four trains departing Glasgow between 12.40pm and 3.40pm priced at £42, which is still better than the cheapest air fare. By contrast, cheapflights.co.uk gives the cheapest flights as easyJet's 9.20pm service to Gatwick, at £43.99, a 2.30pm flight to Luton at £48.99 and a 3.40pm flight to Stansted at £50.99. British Airways' cheapest flight on the day is £65.99.
This is before factoring in the often substantial cost of travel to the airport – a further £23.40 if travelling on the Stansted Express service into London, for example, as opposed to getting a train straight into the city centre.
Damien Henderson,
Communications Manager, Scotland and North England, Virgin Trains,
5th Floor, Caledonian Chambers, 87 Union Street, Glasgow.
THERE is another reason why air travel to London is so popular despite all the hassle of airports. For several years I travelled monthly to visit customers and suppliers in the south-east of England, places such as Staines, Slough and Basildon (by no means all journeys are to the centre of London). To cover several visits in one day, I needed to hire a car at Luton or Stansted, with easy access to the motorway network. From conversations on the aircraft and in the car rental queues, many of my fellow travellers were doing the same. I usually left home by car at 5am, before most public transport gets going, had an easy drive and parked at Glasgow airport with convenient access to the terminal. I would not have wanted to drive into the city centre and looked for parking. Had there been an express train calling at a large "parkway" station near the motorway in the area of, say, Cambuslang, and taking me directly to a similar station with car hire facilities near the M25 I would certainly have taken the train.
Scott Macintosh,
4 Alder Crescent,
Killearn.
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