JFC Travel Blog

In my last post I said that I’d list some of the ways that NXEC has lowered the standards of service lately.

The main changes have affected passengers who liked to take advantage of the on-board catering particularly those who liked to make use of the restaurant.

In January National Express laid off large numbers of their staff which has meant a poor on-board service on busy trains. Until January 2009 over 80 trains a day used to offer a restaurant service to both standard and first class ticket holders, this number has now been reduced to 15.

On selected other services you now have an at seat menu for those in first class while those in standard will have to make do with what’s in the buffet. The first class at seat menu offers freshly prepared hot food but not to the same standard as the restaurant. There’s been complaints that serving meals throughout the train rather than the restaurant is making some services smell like a transport cafe.

The restaurant is not the only thing missing on-board, staff cuts also make the probability of the standard class trolley operating much smaller meaning longer queues at the buffet car.

Staff cuts are also planned at the ticket offices with many offices having reduced hours.

It is planned to install ticket gates in most stations in order to lay off some of the on-board ticket inspectors.

The first class lounges are going to be converted to self-service (the ones that aren’t already), this is in order to further cut costs.

So, if you don’t travel first class or use the restaurant you may think these changes don’t affect you. These changes are just the ones that are publically visible, it wouldn’t be surprising if maintenence budgets were cut meaning less reliable trains and I’ve already heard many complaints about the reliability of the toilets recently.

Also remember the prices of fully flexible tickets. A business traveller buying a flexible first class return from London to Edinburgh will be paying a massive £373, these travellers contribute a large portion to the operation of the service, if these customers decide to switch to flying then that’s a lot of lost revenue and yet more cutbacks.

Since the start of the year National Express East Coast (NXEC) have made some major cutbacks in their on-board service offering while continuing to raise fares. These cutbacks have resulted in a large number of job cutbacks while reducing the high quality of service that was associated with GNER.

If you’re a regular NXEC traveller and disappointed with the new service levels then please sign the petition. The government is responsible for agreeing the standards required for the rail franchises and the current decline in service with NXEC is very frustrating for regular travellers.

For those who’ve not travelled NXEC recently I’ll be creating a post soon listing some of the ways that service has declined since January 2009.

Lufthansa has announced that they’ll be starting direct flights from London Heathrow to Milan Malpensa from 29th March 2009. The flights are part of Lufthansa’s strategy to get more involved in the Italian market and create another hub at Malpensa airport. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s always great to have a weekend away to Brugge (the Flemish spelling, Bruges is the French spelling) in the run up to Christmas in order to get away from the stresses and hassles of London. Last year I had an excellent trip on the Eurostar to Brussels and stayed in the NH Brugge (which was the Sofitel Brugge when I booked, but confusingly was rebranded the week before I stayed there). This time around I will be flying bmi to Brussels and staying in the Crowne Plaza Brugge.

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Although I’ve not been generally happy with the way that NXEC has been ‘enhancing’ services since they replaced GNER I still generally have decent experiences on-board. Ultimately, they were all GNER staff at one time!

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I discovered bmi’s frequent flyer programme - diamond club only a few months ago and it has proven to be one of the most generous frequent flyer programmes in existence. However, with Lufthansa taking over bmi in January it’s very likely that diamond club will be merged with Lufthansa’s much less generous Miles & More scheme.

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I often take advantage of the Crowne Plaza in Shoreditch (formerly the Saint Gregory Hotel before it became part of IHG) as it’s minutes away from work and means I can have a decent night out in Central London, have a good breakfast and not have to bother commuting to work feeling worse for wear.

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KLM plan to offer flights from Liverpool to Amsterdam Schiphol from 29th March 2009. Although this route is already served by easyJet, KLM are primarily going after the market of passengers who would like to fly from their local airport and connect to worldwide destinations at Schiphol rather than making the drive or train journey to Heathrow and dealing with the hassles that involves. KLM offer more UK connections to their primary hub than any other airline making it a popular choice for those who live outside of London. However, the south coast of England is not currently served by any KLM services although they do codeshare with Air France out of Southamption.

One service that I’ve started to use recently is National Express dot2dot. The service is effectively a shared minibus taxi service from Heathrow Airport to Central London. The price is significantly cheaper than a taxi and compares favourably with the Heathrow Express. As this service picks you up at your door and drops you off at the terminal you don’t have the hassle of getting to the station and then fighting with the crowds. How does this compare with other means of getting to the airport?

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I had hoped that National Express East Coast (NXEC) would provide a loyalty scheme that’d encourage people off the planes and onto the trains. The new scheme was recently announced and is called ‘escape’ and launches on the 1st December. I used to find the GNERtime scheme excellent but this new scheme is really hardly any incentive at all. Here’s how they compare… Read the rest of this entry »