A record number of passengers have chosen to travel by train over plane on the Scotland-London route. New figures reveal an 18% year-on-year growth in Virgin Trains passengers travelling between Glasgow/Edinburgh and London in June. In June, a total of 180,000 customers travelled on Virgin Trains services between Edinburgh and London and the east coast and Glasgow and London on the west coast, up from 152,000 a year earlier. This represented 33% of the total air/rail market on the UK’s busiest domestic air routes, beating a previous record set in 2014. On the east coast route between Edinburgh and London, Virgin Trains’ market share against airlines was as high as 37%, up two percentage points on its previous peak in 2014. On the west coast, Virgin Trains’ market share between Glasgow and London was 27%.
Virgin Trains has enjoyed strong growth on its two routes connecting Scotland to London thanks to a string of customer service improvements introduced over the last two years. On the east coast route, Virgin has completely refurbished its train interiors and introduced 25 additional direct London-Edinburgh services per week, while the west coast route has seen punctuality improve to its best level in more than a decade.
On both routes fares have been lowered to compete more aggressively with airlines and the company introduced BEAM, the onboard entertainment app that allows customers to stream hundreds of hours of leading films and TV to their devices.
Virgin has seen similarly strong growth in July and August and expects to retain its record-breaking market share, though comparable CAA figures for airlines are not yet available for these months.
The increase in market share for rail journeys comes against an increase in the overall travel market, with air and rail travel between Glasgow/Edinburgh and London increasing from 6 million in 2014 to 6.7 million last year.
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