Fast trains closing the gap on air travel for short trips
Charlotte So 26 October 2009
With high-speed train services posing a rising threat to mainland airlines, carriers will have to do more than cut prices to stay in business.
With trains exceeding 300km/h soon to be zipping around the country, the travel time gap between rail and air is closing. After check-in and transit from the city centre to the airport, the advantage of air over train has been reduced to nearly nothing for train services under four hours.
High-speed railways could take up to 90 per cent of the high-end market for trips under two hours and 50 to 70 per cent of journeys under four hours, according to a study by Carnoc.com, a website run by the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
About one-third of the destinations operated by airlines were within the coverage of the mainland’s planned high-speed train network, said Liao Quanwang, a researcher at China Aviation Industry Corp.
Short-haul routes under 800 kilometres will be affected the most, especially on the economically developed eastern coast.
Air ticket prices on certain routes have already plunged.
After the 250km/h service between Shanghai and Wuhan cut travel time in half to under five hours in April, the one-way air ticket fell as low as 240 yuan (HK$272). That compares with train ticket prices of 274 yuan to 328 yuan.
The air fare from Nanjing to Wuhan fell to 290 yuan, as opposed to 113 yuan to 209 yuan for the train fare after the train journey between the two cities was cut by nearly eight hours to less than three hours.
On routes where the airlines have been reluctant to cut fares to compete with rail, passenger numbers have dived. The number of flights between Beijing and Taiyuan decreased to 575 per month in April when a high-speed train service started, from 730 flights in the previous months. The passenger load factor fell to 71.4 per cent in April from 76.75 per cent in March.
Price-cutting may do little to help carriers safeguard their market share in the long term and may harm their bottom lines.
One suggestion has been to establish collaborative co-operation with railway operators.
Transport that combined railway and airlines is popular in Europe. Lufthansa and Deutsche Railway joined hands to offer “seamless inter-modal services” by aligning train services with flight timetables at Frankfurt Airport in 2002.
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Fast trains closing the gap on air travel for short trips
Charlotte So
26 October 2009
With high-speed train services posing a rising threat to mainland airlines, carriers will have to do more than cut prices to stay in business.
With trains exceeding 300km/h soon to be zipping around the country, the travel time gap between rail and air is closing. After check-in and transit from the city centre to the airport, the advantage of air over train has been reduced to nearly nothing for train services under four hours.
High-speed railways could take up to 90 per cent of the high-end market for trips under two hours and 50 to 70 per cent of journeys under four hours, according to a study by Carnoc.com, a website run by the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
About one-third of the destinations operated by airlines were within the coverage of the mainland’s planned high-speed train network, said Liao Quanwang, a researcher at China Aviation Industry Corp.
Short-haul routes under 800 kilometres will be affected the most, especially on the economically developed eastern coast.
Air ticket prices on certain routes have already plunged.
After the 250km/h service between Shanghai and Wuhan cut travel time in half to under five hours in April, the one-way air ticket fell as low as 240 yuan (HK$272). That compares with train ticket prices of 274 yuan to 328 yuan.
The air fare from Nanjing to Wuhan fell to 290 yuan, as opposed to 113 yuan to 209 yuan for the train fare after the train journey between the two cities was cut by nearly eight hours to less than three hours.
On routes where the airlines have been reluctant to cut fares to compete with rail, passenger numbers have dived. The number of flights between Beijing and Taiyuan decreased to 575 per month in April when a high-speed train service started, from 730 flights in the previous months. The passenger load factor fell to 71.4 per cent in April from 76.75 per cent in March.
Price-cutting may do little to help carriers safeguard their market share in the long term and may harm their bottom lines.
One suggestion has been to establish collaborative co-operation with railway operators.
Transport that combined railway and airlines is popular in Europe. Lufthansa and Deutsche Railway joined hands to offer “seamless inter-modal services” by aligning train services with flight timetables at Frankfurt Airport in 2002.
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