Edinburgh<>London market share goes to rail for 'first time'...

[whole diary]

[IndustryInsider]

...well, not the first time as I'm sure decades ago rail was king, but nice to see it regain that throne. 

Combination of reasons, including the open access Lumo service as well as the general pickle the aviation sector has found itself in, though given strike disruption on the railways it's pretty indicative that there has been a modal shift nonetheless:

https://news.stv.tv/east-central/rail-preferred-over-air-for-passengers-travelling-between-edinburgh-and-london-for-first-time

[stuving]

My reaction to that (being an unregenerate old sceptic) was what data are behind that? Air journeys city-city are fairly easy to count, overall journey start and end less so, and for rail you can have a wider variety of journeys using the same train.

But more immediately, the news is based on a Lumo (First Group) press release. That says it is based on CAA^» (Civil Aviation Authority - about) data and LENNON^▸ (Latest Earnings Nationally Networked Over-Night ), but doesn't define what the rail journey data categories were. Their claim with numbers is:

Between April and August, for the first time over half (57%) of journeys between Edinburgh and London were by rail, compared to a pre-pandemic position of 35%. Some 63% of travellers chose rail over domestic flights in July itself, suggesting the trend may be set to continue.

CAA data are easy to find, but tedious to extract and add up for all those months. LENNON data are not, I think, accessible in that detailed form. So ... do you trust First Group to do that? It is, as II says, not inherently unlikely, given the steep drop in air passengers on this route.