Cardiff airport

Advance tickets start at £18 single BUT they are few and far between compared to years ago. I don't understand why GWR are happy to run very quiet trains with fixed costs rather than sell extra seats at a cheap rate. Very odd.

Advance tickets start at £18 single BUT they are few and far between compared to years ago. I don't understand why GWR are happy to run very quiet trains with fixed costs rather than sell extra seats at a cheap rate. Very odd.

Who understands anything about the way our railways work these days? I don't have a particular side in the public v private sector arguement but the way our railways operate is incredibly opaque and seems to be a system that rewards failure.

It seems to me that when the railways were privatised it should have produced either a national or a system of regional monopolies owning and controlling the track and the rolling stock with a very strong regulator. Instead we have an incredibly fragmented sytem where a bunch of wide-boys run endless rings around naive civil servants.

It just doesn't make business sense to price people out of your service and then have umpteen empty seats. Some off peak trains are busier than others but I've been on one that had 1 other person in the carriage, none that were anywhere near half full before Reading.

I travelled back and forth between Cardiff and London a lot in January, usually by Megabus at £8-£10 each way, and they were all busy. I'd take that money on my quiet train any day.

It just doesn't make business sense to price people out of your service and then have umpteen empty seats.

It can make very good business sense actually. It all depends on the "elasticity of demand". This measures the % change in the quantity of an item sold for a 1% change in its price. So in this case, the percentage change in no of passengers for a 1% change in price.

If the elasticity of demand is bigger than 1 in asbolute terms, your turnover goes up as prices are cut. You get 1% less per person, but you get more than 1% more people. If the marginal cost of the extra passenger is low (as it probably is) your profits as well as turnover increases. So in that circumstance it makes sense for you to sell more seats at a chaper price.

But if the elasticity of demand is smaller than 1 in absolute terms, your turnover goes up as prices are increased! You get 1% more per passenger, and lose fewer than 1% of passengers. And with fewer passengers your extra turnover is almost guaranteed to be extra profits.

Now in a completely free market these "profits" get competed away by new entrants. But of course railways arent a completely free market - far from it. And while they face competition from other markets (e.g. long distance coaches), that competition can't compete all these profits away.

So it can make compete financial sense for them to have lots of empty seats if the price cut to get them filled would mean they lose more on the seats already sold than they make on the new seats sold.

It also makes clear why they segment the market with so many differnet ticket prices. They get to charge a high price on those who need flexibility or need to book last minute. People who have "low elasticities" of demand. But they can then charge a lower price on those able and willing to travel at odd times or book months in advance. In other words, people who have quite "high elasticities" of demand.

Basic Econ 101 is a pretty powerful tool for understanding whats happening in our railways industry!

It's simple really, pay more at popular, time critical times and when a traveller is more flexible, charge less.

Surely you didnt actually pay that sort of money yourself? Or is it just looking at what you might have paid if you just turned up

No I didn't pay it myself, expense claim etc!
No one who travels on the London train between 06:25 and 08:25 actually pays the fare themselves.
Sadly, ALL of us end up paying for it.

Here is a list of all the possible fares between Cardiff and Paddington, even Michael O'Leary can only dream at having this many.

http://www.brfares.com/#!fares?orig=CDF&dest=PAD

Like energy companies they seem to just want to confuse the market!!!

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/cardiff-airport-sees-ten-months-11153242

They're doing something right to get 22% growth, good to see more flights being announced pretty regularly.

I would guess that a lot of this growth is at the expense of Bristol.

Bristol is also doing pretty well - up 8% so far this year, and up 8% last year.

There may be knock on effects on Bristol, but I imagine some of the growth of Cardiff actually comes from Heathrow and Brum. And actually a fair part is just pent-up demand that otherwise would not have happened.

Well I shall be using Cardiff Airport for the first time since I moved here 11 years ago in June, mainly down to Vueling coming in a total of £100 cheaper than Ryanair or Easyjet going from Bristol but also happy there's no bridge fare, petrol or parking charges either!

Bristol is also doing pretty well - up 8% so far this year, and up 8% last year.

There may be knock on effects on Bristol, but I imagine some of the growth of Cardiff actually comes from Heathrow and Brum. And actually a fair part is just pent-up demand that otherwise would not have happened.

That last part is almost certainly true. Taking a weekend break from Bristol is a bit of a hassle - enough to put you off at times. I suspect a lot of the growth at Rhoose is people taking short breaks abroad that they would otherwise have taken at home.