News in brief:
Virgin Group to run trains through the Channel Tunnel
According to a report in the Telegraph last weekend (paywall), Virgin Group is preparing to announce a new rail service to break Eurostar’s monopoly on the Channel Tunnel.
The report says that the former boss of Virgin Trains, Phil Whittingham, who joined First Group after Virgin Trains was wound up in 2019, is leading the plans. Whittingham has time on his hands after being forced out as Managing Director of Avanti West Coast last year due to service failures.
Virgin Group is not the only company considering options for the Channel Tunnel. Spanish operator Evolyn is also believed to be planning services.
Whilst there is substantial spare capacity on the HS1 rail line and through the Channel Tunnel, it isn’t clear how scarce platform space at London St Pancras would be allocated. One option may be for Virgin Group to operate from Stratford International, although I suspect that it would need to position itself as a low cost operator for this to succeed.
PS. The person negotiating with Evolyn and Virgin Group for track access rights will be Robert Sinclair. The CEO of London City Airport, who we have interviewed on HfP in the past, resigned last week and will be joining HS1 as CEO in January.
Wheely’s ‘Perfect Airport Pickup’ is very slick indeed
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned upmarket chauffeur service Wheely’s New First Class service – click to read more. It is, easily, the most luxurious ‘on demand’ chauffeur service available in London.
Wheely had also offered me a free trial of its ‘Perfect Airport Pickup’ service, but I didn’t have a suitable flight at the time. My wife was coming back from doing some HfP hotel reviews in Vienna last week (the full-time HfP team being tied up at World Travel Market) so I decided to let her try it.
What is very slick about booking the Wheely ‘Perfect Airport Pickup’ service is that all you need to do is open the app and input your flight number and travel date. That’s it. No need to mess about with arrival times, terminal etc. Wheely tracks the flight and if it’s delayed, the driver will simply turn up later. One hour of waiting time is included in the agreed fare in case you are stuck waiting for your bag or at immigration.
Here’s her driver waiting in Terminal 3:
…. and here’s the Mercedes S-Class she got:
The cost would have been £86 to West London if we’d paid for it. This is only about £15 more than we usually pay for an Uber, which involves hanging around in the short term car park for 10 minutes and getting a lower quality car. The Wheely driver even carried my wife’s bag up the steps to our front door. It’s very slick and I can see us using it again at our expense if the children aren’t there.
Wheely runs occasional cashback offers with American Express if you want an incentive to give the service a try – keep an eye out on your Amex Offers. You can download the app from your local app store.