Network Rail spends £1m ...on flights
NETWORK Rail spent more than £1million on air tickets for its staff – with most flights inside the UK.
The firm, which has responsibility for the upkeep of rail lines and stations, made bookings for internal flights almost 90 times every week, it has emerged.
The revelation also coincided with a boast from the quango’s £588,000-a-year chief executive Andrew Haines that rail is the “greenest” form of mass passenger transport.
Writing in Network Rail’s annual report, Mr Haines said: “While rail is already the greenest form of mass passenger transport and rail freight takes 7.79 million lorry journeys off the roads every year, there is still much more we can do.”
Network Rail sanctions its staff to jet around the UK if a flight ticket works out cheaper than a train journey to the same destination.
In 2019, staff spent £1million on 4,599 flight tickets for UK domestic journeys and another 2,097 tickets for foreign travel.
There were even 1,316 plane journeys between Birmingham and Glasgow, where a train ticket for the 252-mile trip can cost £40.Alex Hynes, the firm’s managing director for Scotland, had the most flights among the executives. His 13 trips were mainly single journeys between London and Scotland, with one costing £243.
Officials said the London meetings may have been too early or late for train travel.
A spokesman for ASLEF, the train drivers’ trade union, said: “Sadly, this is hypocrisy of an exceedingly high order. Andrew Haines and his top bods trumpet the green benefits of the railway – which are real enough – while racking up the air miles and destroying the environment. Network Rail staff should practise what they preach and let the train take the strain. It’s a better, more efficient, and much cleaner way to travel than using planes or cars.”
A Network Rail spokesman said: “We book the cheapest option available and as 99 per cent of our business travel is by rail it’s clear that trains invariably represent the best value.”