Why reserving train seats brings few rewards
sir–GP Brown( Letters, August 13) makes a valid observation about passengers reserving seats and then occupying “more desirable” ones, but misses the far more important point that the current booking system, although supposedly offering a choice of seats, seems to be designed to give passengers the seats they least desire.
A notable exception to this is LNER (and Virgin East Coast before it), which allows customers to select any available seat when booking online. At the other extreme, Transpennine Express on a number of services does not reserve specific seats with advance tickets, which can leave passengers who have booked such tickets with the unenviable task of getting another passenger to move from a seat so they can sit down.
David Muir
Bristol
sir – When my wife and I have occupied more desirable seats, we simply remove the reservation cards from our “reserved” ones.
Nigel Mckie
Helston, Cornwall