I hope this gets fixed soon. I don’t want to sound pessimistic but I don’t hold out a lot of hope for the Fort William service (or any of the other sections which were suspended after Christmas) restarting in late March. Late May would be my guess, but we’ll see.
My feeling is that late March is ambitious for a restart, but Easter School Holiday is one of those fixed points that always drive targetting for planning. Late May would then potentially also miss another fixed point: half term.
As we’ve seen throughout, it’ll probably be when we reach preceding fixed points, particularly the English review on the 22nd February, and the proposed reopening of some schools in Scotland at the same time, that we get a better idea.
One thing that has occurred to me for the coming year is whether Caledonian Sleeper should really look at its ticketing terms, though.
They are unusually ‘binary’; customers have only two options, of either full payment, no changes, no refunds -or- full payment, free changes, full refund.
Indeed, for Caledonian Double, only one option is offered: fully changeable and refundable.
The issues here are that there’s almost no incentive for a fixed ticket holder to do anything other than no-show if they can’t travel, leaving rooms empty, and flexible ticket holders can pull out up to two days before departure, leaving those rooms empty too - in the latter case with all revenue lost and little opportunity to resell.
I’ve no idea if this has already happened on occasion, but I can see it being a risk in future, especially given that certain occupancy combinations mean that the price difference between fixed and flexible is not all that great.