Virgin To Fly Between London And Manchester

These short haul flights between Manchester and London are just what we don’t need, as proportionately, they generate more carbon emissions per passenger than long haul flights.

Would Virgin be running them, if they still had the franchise to run trains on the West Coast Main line?

As someone, who’s travelled on this line north of Manchester and seen the overcrowding, it could be argued, that perhaps Virgin should be running flights between Glasgow and Manchester. Hopefully this problem will get easier, when the extra and bigger Pendelinos are running at the end of this year.

But really short haul flights in this country are not needed, if we make sure the train service is good. Except of course when you need to get to an island, like Jersey or the Isle of Man, or across the Irish Sea. Having experienced the train line to Inverness, you might argue that the North of Scotland might need flights, but new trains up the East Coast and better connections in Edinburgh and Glasgow, might even force the airlines off those routes.

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