Manchester to London return. Plane is £216 via Dublin but takes longer, train is £370. Which would you choose?

35 comments

1. Surely there must be a way to split ticket or go by a different route (e.g. cross the Pennines first) to save some money on the train?

2. Is coach an option?

3. Get the coach. Between getting to and from the airport, messing about checking in and all the hanging about, it’ll end up being about the same amount of time.

4. £370 is ridiculous – have you tried looking at [mytrainpal.com](https://Trainpal.com)? Or coaches?

5. How have you got to £370 ?

   I just did a quick look and standard returns are about £125 without railcard.

6. What are the dates? I’ll sort you something out.

7. National Express: £12.90. Manchester bus station to Victoria as a quick example.

8. Whoever it is you’re seeing in London, just fly them and yourself to Amsterdam for about £40 and spend the remainder on beer and cheese.

9. Where are you looking to get those prices? you can go next week from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston for £76.70 return. I was looking on nationalrail.co.uk, standard class.

10. Bollocks. Just plan around the train prices. You should be able to get a return for about 50 quid 🤣

11. I think you may have waited too long to prebook the train. Looks like it’s about 70 quid return if booked about 4 weeks in advance.

    (Still a daft amount IMO)

12. I echo the kind offer made by /u/Implement_Dangerous

    Tell us what your dates and times are and they and I and other nice people will find a cheap way for you.

13. https://liftshare.com/uk

    There are folk offering seats driving from manchester to london for covering half the petrol.

14. !answer we’ve moved the meeting to teams for other reasons. Thank you everyone for the kind offers of assistance

15. Are you travelling first class..?
    £100 on the Trainline app

16. Don’t know how your train is £370, last time I caught it I paid £59 (return August time) when I pre planned I some times paid £9. Yes £9 for a return.

17. Fuck that, I’d drive, it’s a third of the cost. Even if you chucked in CC and parking you’re still well over a ton up.

18. these are last minute tickets right?

19. Is that off peak? If you’ve got time to fly surely you’ve got time to go off peak and it wouldn’t be that ££?

20. How is the train £370?

    I can go tonight and back rush hour tomorrow for less than 100 quid according to trainline

21. When looking at stuff like this I always wondered… who are these prices for? Surely people are not so dumb as to think this is a normal price? Manchester to London is only like a tenner on National Express and takes like 3/4 hours and leaves every couple of hours.

    Why the hell would someone pay nearly £400? Might as well just burn your money. Some people yeesh.

22. Megabus? Shitloads cheaper!

23. First of all, you can offset the carbon footprint for less than a tenner (basically money gets spent on projects for better energy efficiency elsewhere that saves the amount.

    Beyond that, there are things like how much longer it takes, whether I really need to be somewhere quickly or not.

    Like I’m taking coaches a lot to London now. Mostly it’s about the risk of a strike hitting and not being able to get to a concert, but it’s also that it’s £12 instead of £30. And I have a phone, a book, some snacks. What would I be doing if I get back at 9:30 instead of 10:30? Probably reading reddit, playing a game. So not really much of a loss.

24. Megabus- like £10 per person and 4h journey. 4h is 2x films and bottle of wine. keep the £350 difference

25. Need to look for you train tickets on split ticket, Never national rail

26. Fly to Dublin, have a Guinness and a potato en route.

27. If you’re savvy and book in advance you can get a train up north for £20. That’s precious but I’m sure you can get a better deal.

28. Megabus £20

29. Get a national express bus. It’ll take like 5 hours and it’ll cost you nothing. Watch two movies and you’re there

30. London North Western and Northern via Crewe will be half that price !

31. I’m sure someone’s already mentioned this, but if you use a split tickets app like Railboard, you can often get that price down a chunk.

32. Plane. £154 saved

33. I have to ask who quoted you £370 for the train because I regularly travel from London around the country, and even last minute, it hasn’t cost that. I’d always say train because it’s easy, and there’s no faffing and checking in, unlike an airport, but that price is no where near correct.

34. That sounds a lot like the anytime (i.e. valid on any train) price, which is not comparing like with like – plane tickets will very much be for specific times.

    Depending how far in advance you are looking, there should be advance (i.e. specific train) tickets for a lot less, particularly if you can travel at off peak times. Or as others have said look at a coach.

35. £12 on a bus…..ok it takes a while, but whatever if i have the time.