GNER memories: Standard Plus
by JFC AdminStandard Plus was GNER’s answer to what airlines call Premium Economy. The GNER Standard Plus product basically offered first class service in a standard class seat. Standard Plus was initially introduced on the London – Leeds services, it was then extended to the services towards Newcastle but was relatively quickly withdrawn on this route and finally scrapped altogether.
Standard Plus was always located in the carriage located closest to the buffet (Coach F before the carriages were relabelled) and on quieter services only half of the carriage was dedicated to Standard Plus. To use Standard Plus you needed a Standard Open ticket, there was no special Standard Plus ticket. The Standard Open is the fully flexible rail ticket that’s significantly more expensive than other open dated tickets such as the Saver, you need a Standard Open if you’re travelling into London during the morning peak.
Standard Plus seemed to be aimed at the business traveller whose company expense policy only permitted standard class travel. It gave the traveller the incentive to buy an expensive Standard Open ticket when perhaps a much cheaper ticket like the Saver would have sufficed (i.e. they weren’t travelling during the morning peak). The replacement to Standard Plus was the Standard Business Package, no more special service just a couple of £3 buffet vouchers and a days car parking.
As mentioned earlier Standard Plus could be summed up as first class service in a standard class seat. Despite this being the closest carriage to the buffet, an at-seat service was provided should you like to purchase anything and the complimentary drinks and snacks were the same that were offered to first class. A few differences to first class included the use of mugs instead of cups (usually china but I’ve noticed these were occasionally plastic) and a paper ‘Standard Plus’ headrest cover (although these were made from cloth on White Rose trains).
Standard Plus only operated on weekdays, on weekends it used to be possible to use Weekend First free of charge when holding a Standard Open Return, avoiding the £10-£15 fee holders of cheaper tickets had to pay. I don’t think Standard Open ticket holders get the free upgrade anymore, it’s certainly not documented anywhere.
Standard Plus was a good idea but it was hard to implement right. The National Rail ticket naming scheme holds some of the blame here, many people think that ‘Standard Open’ refers to any standard class ticket with an open dated return portion (such as a Saver) rather than a particular type of ticket, therefore a lot of people thought they had the correct ticket but in fact didn’t. On busy trains the queue for the buffet would often stretch into the aisle of coach F making it difficult to provide the at-seat service and sometimes passengers with incorrect tickets were reserved seats into Standard Plus by mistake (usually if a ticket was bought at a non-GNER ticket office as that carriage just shows up as a regular standard coach).
December 8th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Standard plus was very inconsistent. Sometimes it was full and so was a waste of money if you’d purchased a more expensive ticket to use this carriage, other times the service would not be operating. I can see why they scrapped this.