In a win for the railways, it seems the Trenitalia and Italo have beaten Ryanair on the Italian trunk route between Rome Ciampino and Milan Orio al Serio according to CH-Aviation.
The last day of flights is currently booked for 29th March 2014 that are due to operated by Ryanair.
Train sometimes have a superior advantage, when there are centre-to-centre services, defeating the need for getting to the airport, online checkin, security queues, gate Waiting (which is an hour plus), actually flying (which in most cases is the short bit), and then getting out of the airport to a city centre and finally your destination.
In real terms, anything around three hours (give or take half an hour), and the train has an advantage over the plane.
Eurostar did this and destroyed the London to Paris/Brussels network (turning the flights into connecting traffic only), Thayls did the same between Brussels and Paris (nearly killing off flights between the two cities), and the TGV destroyed the Paris to Lyon market.
The Rome to Milan route takes 3 hours 15 minutes depending on the operator you use, so this falls into the airplane beating category nicely.
Whilst Ryanair is pulling the route, other airlines will continue to ply trade including Altalia and EasyJet.
Maybe Ryanair’s “Out in the middle on nowhere strategy” didn’t help here in the least (Alitalia and EasyJet operate from the more popular airports, but its interesting to see the effect of competition – when it hits where it’s least expected…
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