RAIL VS. FLIGHT: COMPARING PRICE & DURATION

Earlier this week I blogged about the Top 5 Reasons your Company needs to Include Rail as a Travel Option. I thought I would follow up by comparing the price and duration for rail and flight travel on some of the busiest corporate travel routes in Europe.

This comparison was performed by Phocuswright in April of 2015. They looked at fares two weeks before departure using Loco2.com for train travel and Expedia.com for flights. You can see the results in the table below.

In general, the costs for the two modes of travel are comparable, but the durations are skewed in favor of flying. However, those times do not include the time needed to get to the airport, the time needed for check-in and security, or the time needed to get into the city center at the destination. Once you add these items to the flight times, it will be a more accurate comparison. And when you add the other reasons to travel by train, rail becomes the obvious choice ☺

You can read more about these findings, and other related topics, at Rethinking Rail: Disruption and Digital Distribution in Europe’s Online Travel Market