UK trains battle planes

The train is catching up with the plane in Britain, with airports reporting fewer domestic travellers and trains becoming ever more full.

Liverpool's John Lennon Airport last week finally fell victim to the rise of rail after years of competition when Belgian airline VLM scrapped its last flights from London, saying it could not make money on them.

At nearby Manchester Airport, the number of domestic travellers fell by 8.6 per cent to 1.33 million in the first five months of this year.

And while airline executives argue that the weakness is largely due to consumer sentiment, train companies have seen no such evidence.

Journeys between Manchester and London were up 18.2 per cent to around 821,700 in a similar timeframe, says Virgin Rail, a joint venture between Stagecoach and Richard Branson's Virgin Group.

In recent years, journeys which typically took over four hours by rail - such as London to Edinburgh - were successfully targeted by airlines.

But the sector's rule of thumb is changing in Britain amid tight airport security which slows boarding and the impact of rising taxes and interest rates.

And this year, aviation has also started to face a growing challenge from environmentally-conscious travellers concerned at CO2 emissions from planes.

"Environmental issues have had a major impact," said Stagecoach Chief Executive Officer Brian Souter. "We are seeing a modal shift."

The environmental statistics vary wildly, putting the CO2 impact of aviation anywhere between four and ten times that of rail on domestic-length journeys.

But airline executives argue money and time are still the biggest factors. "If people do have an environmental conscience, you can buy it for a fiver," said one.

And European air travel is still expected to double by 2020, says the industry body Airports Council International.

But UK domestic aviation has been suffering for the last few months as consumers tighten purse strings amid rising interest rates and terrorism fears, highlighted last week when two attackers rammed a burning Jeep into Glasgow airport. A failed plot to bomb transatlantic airliners last August had already led to a crackdown at UK airports causing queues and delays and forcing some travellers back on to long-distance trains.

There they discovered that the slow, overcrowded carriages they remembered had been replaced by slicker, faster trains as years of investment in once-creaking infrastructure starts to make itself felt.

Many trains have power sockets and WiFi wireless internet to attract business travellers.

"People are now treating the train as an extension of the office," said a Virgin Rail spokesman. "We hear of lawyers billing for four or five hundred pounds while on the train."

With rail in the ascendancy and two major franchises up for grabs in coming months - Cross Country and InterCity East Coast - competition is heating up between operators such as Stagecoach, National Express, FirstGroup and Arriva.

The heaviest blow for domestic airlines came when then-Finance Minister Gordon Brown doubled airport tax (APD) from February 1, because of environmental concerns, forcing up air fares, said an easyJet spokesman.

The long-term decline in UK domestic aviation is inevitable, having only been given room to grow due to the lack of investment in high speed railways, says Chris Green, chairman of the Railway Forum.