UK passengers set to pay a third more to travel by train than by plane

Passengers could be set to pay a third more to travel by train than by plane in the UK from 1 April, according to new research.

A study conducted by Which? links the impending decrease in Airport Passenger Duty (APD) on UK domestic flights to a wider price gap emerging between the two modes of travel.

The consumer champion used Skyscanner and Trainline to analyse train and plane routes over the Easter weekend across 10 popular UK routes, and found that rail tickets were 35 per cent more expensive on average.

At the most dramatic end of the price gap scale, a ticket from Edinburgh to Bournemouth came out as 239 per cent more expensive when travelling by train compared to by plane.

The cheapest return rail fare found for this route cost £127, compared to £38 for a return flight.

The APD cut takes effect from the beginning of April and will see the current £13 charge be more than halved to £6.50.

As a result, there is an incentive for airlines to add further domestic routes to their schedules and persuade passengers to switch from rail to air travel.

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary recently said this APD decrease “has allowed Ryanair to add more domestic routes to our UK schedule.”

Public transport campaigners and environmentalists have raised concerns about the increase in emissions caused by passengers swapping train travel for carbon-heavy flights.

Which? found that a flight on the Edinburgh to Bournemouth route emits around 218kg of CO2 per person on board, 131 per cent more than the equivalent rail journey.

According to climate organisation Atmosfair, the routes responsible for the most CO2 pollution per person when travelling by plane are Bristol to Aberdeen (351kg), Edinburgh to Newquay (319kg) and London to Inverness (306kg).

This research also highlights that when travelling from Newcastle to Southampton, 275 per cent more carbon emissions are produced when travelling by plane rather than train.

However, this journey was one of three out of the 10 routes analysed that was cheaper when conducted by train. The return ticket Which? found was £107 when using split tickets, in comparison to a £175 plane ticket for the same journey. The return train route takes 11 hours in total, four times more than the equivalent flight time.

The other two journeys which cost less when completed by rail over the Easter break were from…