Avanti West Coast cancellations

[trainophile]

Coach C is still unreserved on the 11 cars.

Not very many seats in C when you allow for the space taken by the shop.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not ideal. Better surely just to disallow reservations during disruption. Sounds like a typical case of poor railway communication…

This seems dead simple to sort out. Switch them off (don't let them all show Available as they were doing) and have notices stating that if they are switched off they do not apply and to sit anywhere in that case.

Not very many seats in C when you allow for the space taken by the shop.

U is unreserved on an 11 as well, that way it is interchangeable with a 9. This might change when the 9s lose a 1st coach as that will presumably become U.

 

[Sheridan]

Staff are saying reservations still apply and that those without or anyone wrongly double booked should go to coach C (and sometimes declassified standard premium). But it appears none are displayed.

When I travelled from Lancaster to Crewe last week, the TM from Lancaster said that all reservations were cancelled, but the TM who relieved her at Preston didn’t make any announcements regarding reservations. One lady got on at Wigan and asked to sit in her booked seat, but there were enough passengers who had been on north of Preston to tell her that they had been cancelled. A bit of a mess when there isn’t even consistency on a single service! (Reservations weren’t showing on the screens.)

Edit: she was able to get a seat, but was a bit put out as she had specifically booked a table seat to do some work.

 

[JamieL]

Avanti is unusable in its current state. An intercity provider not honouring/providing seat reservations is totally unacceptable.

 

[43066]

This seems dead simple to sort out. Switch them off (don't let them all show Available as they were doing) and have notices stating that if they are switched off they do not apply and to sit anywhere in that case.

Yes that probably would be better. Or at least regular announcements to that effect.

Otherwise, as I experienced on a GWR 800 recently, people will board the correct coach, find “their” seat and if it’s occupied they will (not unreasonably!) try to insist on sitting in it. Ideally the seat numbers would also be displayed in a format that could be switched off so there could be no possible basis for anyone claiming that any particular seat is “their” seat and “but this is coach X, look what my seat reservation ticket says if you don’t believe me” etc.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Avanti is unusable in its current state.

I agree with that, certainly.

An intercity provider not honouring/providing seat reservations is totally unacceptable.

I'm not sure how true that is. Sometimes things just work better when they are turned off.

 

[trainophile]

Tell TfW that not offering seat reservations is unacceptable!

 

[Cowley]

Ok, we think that everything that needed to be discussed has probably been covered by now.

Anyone who wants to find out about Avanti cancellations can look on JourneyCheck for up to date information anyway, so thanks for the input and we’ll leave this here.