Avanti West Coast makes Fridays off-peak

Avanti West Coast has removed all ticket restrictions on Friday mornings as a trial, having already made every Friday afternoon off-peak. Note the relaxation will also apply all day from December 21-31.

In what I consider to be an own goal, however, AWC only quotes examples of the savings on singles. For example, it says the good news from Manchester to London is that instead of paying £180 for an Anytime Single, passengers will now only need to buy an OffPeak (OP) Single for £64.40, a saving of 64%.

It’s true that many on a Friday who really needed to travel in the morning peak would have paid £180 one way, then £64.40 to come home in the afternoon. But the assumption from Avanti’s press release is that it thinks users now only need to pay £64.40 each way.

Of course, they don’t. The OP Return of £91.10 will apply all day and anyone buying an OP Single each way would waste £37.70.

Yes, I want a singles-only fares structure so that everyone can mix and match fare types, but until we get there the cheapest two-way fare will be the OP Return.

Incidentally, in his excellent article on fares reform in 919, the highly knowledgeable Mark Smith (of ‘ Man at Seat 61’ fame) maintains that OP Singles cost only £1 less than the OP Return (although he does refer to the LNER trial). However, that’s way out of date.

For some years, Great Western Railway’s OP and Super OP Singles have only been around 57% of the respective return, and more recently Avanti has also reduced OP Singles to 70% of the return. Neither are these ‘experiments’ like LNER’s, but commercial ventures. Why do so few know this? Poor marketing, I guess.