vfw614 wrote:

95 € for peak time travel (monday morning) is not expensive. Ryanair is artificially inexpensive. Or are you suggesting that 13 € for a flight DUB-STN is a realistic price for the service provided?

Yes, €95 is expensive for standard class rail fare.

TC957 wrote:

That volume of TXL-MUC & TXL-FRA flights connecting to the LH hubs is why LH doesn't fly long-haul from Germany's capital, and won't exactly rush to do so when BER eventually opens. But for a country with no speed limits on autobahns plus the ICE rail network I too find it quite surprising the amount of flights between the big cities. Even really short hops like MUC-NUE and MUC-STR have multi-daily flights, you can drive these in little over an hour in a decent car !

While on paper there are no speed limits on the Autobahn, in practice as soon as you get to urban areas with multiple slip roads, or sections with only 2 lanes etc, you do get speed limits imposed.

There are many local speed limits and the drivers are responsible at any time to limit their speed to a safe tempo. So if you crash because of overly fast driving the insurance won't pay and you even might get blamed at court.
It's not free speeding anywhere without the fine print.
Official "Richtgeschwindigkeit" (suggested cruise speed) is "only" 130 km/h.

leghorn wrote:

vfw614 wrote:

95 € for peak time travel (monday morning) is not expensive. Ryanair is artificially inexpensive. Or are you suggesting that 13 € for a flight DUB-STN is a realistic price for the service provided?

Yes, €95 is expensive for standard class rail fare.

Wait until you get to the UK... walk up fare for the 4 hour 19 minute trip from London to Edinburgh is £166 in standard class one way.

Yes, you can get cheaper advance tickets, but they’re only valid on one particular train, so miss it, and you’ll need to buy a full fare replacement.

£166 is not cheap for a train fare either and both countries have airport departure taxes which are roughly the same cost.

OlafW wrote:

2. everyone who took the flight before changes to using a car. This is what I consider more likely.

I would say that is the most likely outcome, as it is what I have done too.

I live in the central south of Germany (a tad southwest of Memmingen if that helps), my company has a lab in Berlin and I need to be there about once a month to check on things personally. I have tried the train a couple of times, not once did I arrive on time and the trip takes north of 8 hours. Longest with delays was more than 10 hours. Basically an entire day is wasted by travelling. The plane is faster, but comfort really is out the window too getting to/from the airport, waiting, etc. It also takes roundabout 6 hours door to door if all goes well.

The trip door to door is exactly 650km and the car is by far the quickest and most comfortable option. Choosing the right time and avoiding rush hour traffic near the larger cities on the route it is comfortably driven in 4h30min-5h. I can take a lot of equipment if need be and always fill the car with passengers using the blablacar carsharing app, mostly students who are happy about a cheap and comfy ride. Also it's a lot cheaper than both plane or train, one full tank of diesel (95 litres) gets me there and back. Factoring in the hitchhikers I even turn a healthy profit

That being said, I also know people who commute MUC-BER and STR-BER on a weekly basis, and not one of them regularly use the train. They all fly or drive, the train is simply way too slow and unreliable, basically an uncompetitive means of travel unless you happen to be a retiree for example, and it doesn't really matter to you when you reach your destination and get discounts on the tickets to make it economically viable.

masi1157 wrote:

mxaxai wrote:

Munich airport in particular is poorly connected to the railway network, and early morning departures are difficult to reach because the earliest train itineraries don't arrive before ~ 07:00 h. Much easier to catch a short flight at 06:00, arrive at MUC or FRA at 06:45 and hop on your second leg at 08:00.

Late evening arrivals face the inverse problem. The last train will leave at around 22:00...

I just looked it up at MVG.de and find S-trains from Hauptbahnhof almost all through the night every 40', the only longer gap is between 1:35 and 3:15. The same for the way back, there are regular trains from the airport until 1:24 at night and then a gap until 4:04.


Gruß, masi1157

Yes, but that's not what the original post was alluding to. If you live in Munich or Frankfurt, sure, you won't have a problem catching a flight at the earliest departure hour with public transit because the trunk routes city - airport are operated throughout the night.

However, if you're traveling intercontinental (or wherever, to be quite honest) and you live close to, say, Nuremberg or Stuttgart, you'll have a hard time finding a train to take you to München Hbf to catch an S-Bahn to the airport, and similarly for finding either a long-distance train to Frankfurt Flughafen Fernbahnhof or a feeder to the S-Bahn at Frankfurt Hbf in the middle of the night. So unless you want to pay for an overnight stay in Munich or Frankfurt or spend the night in a train station / airport departure hall (at least free ), you might prefer catching one of these hub feeders, precisely for a lack of viable public transit options.



Example: Coincidentally exactly a year ago (Jan 8th 2019), I was booked on the 8:30am United flight out of FRA to Chicago. Being an intercontinental flight, I intended to be at FRA 2.5 hours before departure, which translated to 6am.

Now, in the grand German scheme of things I really don't live far from Frankfurt, closer than both the Nuremberg and Stuttgart metro areas. During the day time, it's very easy for me to take a commuter train to Mannheim (~15 mins) and connect onto the ICE (~35 mins) to get to FRA, which is the least stressful and fastest way to reach the airport from my location. The first trains on this line only begin to run around 5:30 though, so even catching the first one would have me at FRA later than intended with a tight connection at Mannheim, meaning that if I miss that one, I'd be in a big hurry, because early in the morning the ICEs don't run as frequently as during rush period (when it's roughly 20-minute intervals).

So if I had wanted to be guaranteed to arrive on time, my choice would have been to take the last commuter of the day to Mannheim at 1am, then connect onto the sole middle-of-the-night ICE/IC around 2:30, which would mean I could spend the rest of my night sleepless in FRA until the UA counters would open. Not an option. Luckily, I had someone who could drive me, but if I had lived closer to Stuttgart, it might have been entirely impossible and I might have to rely on taking the hub feeder from STR to FRA.

leghorn wrote:

Yes, €95 is expensive for standard class rail fare.

Except that you can get a train next Monday morning for 67€ and anyone who takes long distance trains in Germany at least semi regularily will reduce this further to 50€ with his Bahncard. Comparing the most expensive trains of the day with a promo fair looks a bit desperate and suggests that the point you want to make doesn't exist at all.

dazeflight wrote:

leghorn wrote:

Yes, €95 is expensive for standard class rail fare.

Except that you can get a train next Monday morning for 67€ and anyone who takes long distance trains in Germany at least semi regularily will reduce this further to 50€ with his Bahncard. Comparing the most expensive trains of the day with a promo fair looks a bit desperate and suggests that the point you want to make doesn't exist at all.

The only trip I see for near 67 is at 6.05am. I was looking at later than that and those prices are now around 90 euro instead of 95 which leads me to believe that deutsche bahn's dynamic pricing will eat all the mehrwertsteuer reduction up and the passengers won't benefit once DB has been given time to manage revenue.
In the short term they have to make it appear that they are passing it on.
I also don't go to Berlin or anywhere outside my Staat regularly and I don't have a loyalty card for Deutsche Bahn. Have you seen the costs of the various bahncards; https://www.finanztip.de/bahntickets/bahncard/
That is not going to incentivise people to either abandon their car or the planes. It is carefully crafted to make it appear that they are incentivising use while maximising income for deutsche bahn
There are only 53000 holders of a bahncard 100, 1.4million bahncard 50 and 3.7m bahncard 50.
Deutsche Bahn have completely abandoned their public service mandate, Lufthansa are protected as much as the Government can get away on internal markets and the roads clog up while competitor airlines are put at a financial disadvantage.

lugie wrote:

Luckily, I had someone who could drive me...

Sure, if you want or need to travel by train to or from further away from the airport, MUC is not the best choice. However, I wouldn't book a flight that I can't reach from my home by public transport. And if there is no other chance than that early morning flight, I might consider arriving at the airport the night before. But well, who am I? I never was that typical business traveller and today I just travel for fun.


Gruß, masi1157

lightmac wrote:

Munich is king (beating Frankfurt interestingly) with over 140 daily domestic flights.

MUC has more domestic flights than FRA bc FRA has high speed rail connections that stop right at the airport and connect to a single-seat train to stations all over Germany, including Cologne, Dusseldorf, Stuttgart, Munich, Nuremberg, Hamburg, etc.

LH also offers a Rail&Fly option with DB when flying internationally, reducing headaches for pax.

TC957 wrote:

Even really short hops like MUC-NUE and MUC-STR have multi-daily flights, you can drive these in little over an hour in a decent car !

Have you ever managed STR-MUC in little over an hour? Absolutely impossible!!! It's 230km, anything below 2 hours would be amazing, the A8 is extremely full of traffic.


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oschkosch wrote:

TC957 wrote:

Even really short hops like MUC-NUE and MUC-STR have multi-daily flights, you can drive these in little over an hour in a decent car !

Have you ever managed STR-MUC in little over an hour? Absolutely impossible!!! It's 230km, anything below 2 hours would be amazing, the A8 is extremely full of traffic.


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Totally not doable in a little over an hour unless it is the middle of the night on Dec 25th and you drive a Bugatti Veyron.

RvA wrote:

oschkosch wrote:

TC957 wrote:

Even really short hops like MUC-NUE and MUC-STR have multi-daily flights, you can drive these in little over an hour in a decent car !

Have you ever managed STR-MUC in little over an hour? Absolutely impossible!!! It's 230km, anything below 2 hours would be amazing, the A8 is extremely full of traffic.


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Totally not doable in a little over an hour unless it is the middle of the night on Dec 25th and you drive a Bugatti Veyron.

Well I know, having driven the route multiple times. That's why I pointed it out.

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oschkosch wrote:

RvA wrote:

oschkosch wrote:

Have you ever managed STR-MUC in little over an hour? Absolutely impossible!!! It's 230km, anything below 2 hours would be amazing, the A8 is extremely full of traffic.


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Totally not doable in a little over an hour unless it is the middle of the night on Dec 25th and you drive a Bugatti Veyron.

Well I know, having driven the route multiple times. That's why I pointed it out.

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Exactly I was supporting that. I drive it a few times per year too.

Trains and motorways are often not good options in Germany.

DBahn is very unreliable and the high-speed network in Germany is nothing to dream about.

Germany is a very densely populated country (at least in most areas) and most motorways are perpetually clogged and it seems that there are always works.

So flying is not such a bad alternative compared to a country like Spain which has far superior road and train networks as of today.

Most people care about price and convenience so will continue to fly.

leghorn wrote:

dazeflight wrote:

leghorn wrote:

Yes, €95 is expensive for standard class rail fare.

Except that you can get a train next Monday morning for 67€ and anyone who takes long distance trains in Germany at least semi regularily will reduce this further to 50€ with his Bahncard. Comparing the most expensive trains of the day with a promo fair looks a bit desperate and suggests that the point you want to make doesn't exist at all.

Deutsche Bahn have completely abandoned their public service mandate, Lufthansa are protected as much as the Government can get away on internal markets and the roads clog up while competitor airlines are put at a financial disadvantage.

Good luck getting cheap intra-germany flights with LH group. Even the 'LCC' Eurowings charges > 350 € per leg on STR-HAM next week (for some flights). You can get a few basic economy tickets for ~ 160 € at select times. DB, on the other hand, will happily sell you that trip for < 100 €, or 136 € for a fully flexible fare.

mxaxai wrote:

leghorn wrote:

dazeflight wrote:

Except that you can get a train next Monday morning for 67€ and anyone who takes long distance trains in Germany at least semi regularily will reduce this further to 50€ with his Bahncard. Comparing the most expensive trains of the day with a promo fair looks a bit desperate and suggests that the point you want to make doesn't exist at all.

Deutsche Bahn have completely abandoned their public service mandate, Lufthansa are protected as much as the Government can get away on internal markets and the roads clog up while competitor airlines are put at a financial disadvantage.

Good luck getting cheap intra-germany flights with LH group. Even the 'LCC' Eurowings charges > 350 € per leg on STR-HAM next week (for some flights). You can get a few basic economy tickets for ~ 160 € at select times. DB, on the other hand, will happily sell you that trip for < 100 €, or 136 € for a fully flexible fare.

100 euro is not inexpensive. LCCs are locked out.

leghorn wrote:

100 euro is not inexpensive. LCCs are locked out.

Still cheaper than a flight or driving by yourself. If you really need to save money, buy early or take Flixbus.

Nobody is stopping U2 from serving those routes, they just don't have the company contracts that allow them to charge such prices.

They are not locked out as such. In the end, the extra margins to pick up from these markets within Germany are not high enough that you would risk going head-to-head with LH who could dump you out of it again within weeks. I have seen this happen to easyJet when they tried Basel-Munich and Basel-Düsseldorf (Basel being right on the border to Germany, there are many German pax on such routes) many years ago. Both airports being ridiculously tight on slots, they were not overly attractive for easyJet (with lots of delayed DUS flights ending up in CGN instead), so both routes got closed again. At the same time, of course LH was able to offer very competitive prices on board bigger aircraft than usual (A319 vs. CRJs and RJ85 at the time). This goes to show that as an LCC, you would have to come with something rock-solid to compete with LH within Germany.

It shows the comparative weakness of the German high-speed rail network compared with France, for example. Compare travel times between major cities at comparable distance. It's routinely double or more.

Quite interesting thread. I, for one, did not realize that MUC-TXL and MUC-HAM have such a HUGE number of flights. It is no exaggeration. Any city pair with >12 daily segments e/w qualifies as huge in my book. Did not realize.

ei146 wrote:

mxaxai wrote:

ei146 wrote:

So where did these more then 2 Mio. passengers come from?

Per some statistics, 1.2 Mio. passengers switched from airplane to rail, and 1 Mio. passengers switched from cars & coaches to rail. Railway marketshare doubled from 23% to 46%, while airline market share dropped from 48% to 30%.
https://www.muenchen.tv/44-millionen-fa ... in-296387/

Yep, I read those reports too, they were in several news outlets. But something must be wrong either with that "market study by Deutsche Bahn" or the numbers in the air passenger statistics in that Wikipedia article. There Eurostat is given as data source. Personally I'd trust Eurostat more than a "market study" by some company with its own interests in that market. But I also don't know the quality of the data mining done by the Wikipedia authors.
Deutsche Bahn probably knows the number of tickets they sell. If they say the number between BER and MUC went from below 2 Mio to more than 4 Mio in 2018 and keep adding trains to the line they probably know what they are doing.
Still I think the number of airline passengers between MUC and BER from Wikipedia must be roughly correct. If it dropped as much as the Bahn-study implied the airline(s) would have withdrawn some serious capacity in 2019. Which didn't happen.
So where these additional train passengers came from, I don't know.

Travel may just be growing faster than rail travel, leaving enough passengers to increase air travel in parallel.

best regards
Thomas

LCDFlight wrote:

Quite interesting thread. I, for one, did not realize that MUC-TXL and MUC-HAM have such a HUGE number of flights. It is no exaggeration. Any city pair with >12 daily segments e/w qualifies as huge in my book. Did not realize.

Let me explain why the MUC and FRA hubs have so many feeder flights. Say you live up north, close to BRE or HAM. Need to get to say BUD or OTP or any city in Europe. In case there is no FR or W6 flight, you need to go through MUC or FRA on LH. No point taking a train down there, so 2 LH flights to get to your destination.

oschkosch wrote:

TC957 wrote:

Even really short hops like MUC-NUE and MUC-STR have multi-daily flights, you can drive these in little over an hour in a decent car !

Have you ever managed STR-MUC in little over an hour? Absolutely impossible!!! It's 230km, anything below 2 hours would be amazing, the A8 is extremely full of traffic.


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I fully agree. Munich to Stuttgart is usually around 3 hours, but I've had 5+ hours if there's an incident or with the never ending road works.

Hamburg to Munich or Stuttgart, really is by air only. Yes you can do it with DB, but you'll spend the day on a train, so it's useless for business.

oschkosch wrote:

LCDFlight wrote:

Quite interesting thread. I, for one, did not realize that MUC-TXL and MUC-HAM have such a HUGE number of flights. It is no exaggeration. Any city pair with >12 daily segments e/w qualifies as huge in my book. Did not realize.

Let me explain why the MUC and FRA hubs have so many feeder flights. Say you live up north, close to BRE or HAM. Need to get to say BUD or or any city in Europe. In case there is no FR or W6 flight, you need to go through MUC or FRA on LH. No point taking a train down there, so 2 LH flights to get to your destination.

If you live near HAM you go to BUD or OTP from there. If you live near Bremen you can drive to Hamburg and take the direct connection. TAROM flies you to Bucharest and Eurowings to Budapest. Europe is pretty well covered.
What is missing in HAM is long haul, especially going west. You fly to MUC or FRA to go to the USA for example. (or KEF)

In Germany, LH Group offers the following in summer 2020. I highlighted all pairs where rail travel time is < 4 h. Clearly, most of these very short flights only serve to feed the hub; there are very few short spoke-spoke flights:

Airport pair, flight time | rail time

TXL - DUS 1:15 | 4:20
TXL - FRA 1:10 | 4:00
TXL - CGN 1:10 | 4:20
TXL - MUC 1:10 | 4:00
TXL - STR 1:20 | 5:40
BRE - FRA 1:00 | 3:45
BRE - MUC 1:15 | 5:20
BRE - STR 1:10 | 5:20
DUS - TXL 1:10 | 4:20
DUS - DRS 1:10 | 6:15
DUS - FRA 0:50 | 1:12
DUS - HAM 1:00 | 3:20
DUS - LEJ 1:15 | 4:50
DUS - HDF* 1:35 | 8:33
DUS - MUC 1:10 | 4:45
DUS - STR 1:10 | 2:40
DUS - GWT* 1:15 | 7:00
DTM - MUC 1:05 | 5:50
DRS - FRA 1:05 | 4:30
DRS - MUC 0:55 | 4:50
DRS - STR 1:05 | 6:00
FDH - FRA 0:50 | 3:40
FRA - MUC 0:55 | 3.15
HAM - CGN 1:00 | 4:00
HAM - MUC 1:15 | 5:40
HAM - NUE 1:05 | 4:25
HAM - SCN 1:20 | 6:50
HAM - STR 1:20 | 5:15
HAJ - FRA 0:55 | 2:05
HAJ - MUC 1:10 | 4:10
HAJ - STR 1:05 | 3:50
HDF* - STR 1:35 | 9:40
HDF* - FRA 1:20 | 8:15
CGN - DRS 1:10 | 5:45
CGN - LEJ 1:00 | 4:30
CGN - MUC 1:05 | 4:30
CGN - GWT* 1:10 | 7:30
LEJ - FRA 1:00 | 3:05
LEJ - MUC 0:55 | 3:10
LEJ - STR 1:05 | 4:40
FMO - FRA 0:45 | 3:05
FMO - MUC 1:10 | 6:30
NUE - FRA 0:45 | 2:05
NUE - MUC 0:40 | 1:05
PAD - MUC 1:05 | 4:50
RLG - MUC 1:20 | 6:40
STR - FRA 1:10 | 1:17
STR - MUC 0:45 | 2:13
STR - GWT* 1:35 | 9:15
GWT* - FRA 1:20 | 7:30
GWT* - MUC 1:25 | 9:20

* no daily service

Below a couple of rail codeshares that have a LH flightnumber:
_____________
QDU - FRA 1:20
XIU - FRA 2:38
QFB - KJR 1:04
MHJ - KJR 0:32
ZEU - FRA 2:01
KWQ - FRA 1:40
QKL - FRA 0:54
MHJ - FRA 0:30
ZAQ - FRA 2:22
ZWS - FRA 0:54
DTZ - FRA 2:12

mjoelnir wrote:

oschkosch wrote:

LCDFlight wrote:

Quite interesting thread. I, for one, did not realize that MUC-TXL and MUC-HAM have such a HUGE number of flights. It is no exaggeration. Any city pair with >12 daily segments e/w qualifies as huge in my book. Did not realize.

Let me explain why the MUC and FRA hubs have so many feeder flights. Say you live up north, close to BRE or HAM. Need to get to say BUD or or any city in Europe. In case there is no FR or W6 flight, you need to go through MUC or FRA on LH. No point taking a train down there, so 2 LH flights to get to your destination.

If you live near HAM you go to BUD or OTP from there. If you live near Bremen you can drive to Hamburg and take the direct connection. TAROM flies you to Bucharest and Eurowings to Budapest. Europe is pretty well covered.
What is missing in HAM is long haul, especially going west. You fly to MUC or FRA to go to the USA for example. (or KEF)

BUD or OTP are just examples. Replace by CLJ, BEG, TIR, BCN, MXP, whatever.

mxaxai wrote:

In Germany, LH Group offers the following in summer 2020. I highlighted all pairs where rail travel time is < 4 h. Clearly, most of these very short flights only serve to feed the hub; there are very few short spoke-spoke flights:

Airport pair, flight time | rail time
HAJ - FRA 0:55 | 2:05

I took this flight regularly for business trips to Asia. Typically, all passengers using this flight have a connection from Frankfurt to wherever. I cannot imagine that someone would fly from HAJ to FRA with Frankfurt being his/her final destination (business, trade fair, Eintracht (no fun at the moment in any way… ...).

LH982 wrote:

Yes you can do it with DB, but you'll spend the day on a train, so it's useless for business.

I get your point but at the same time it might be worth mentioning that – depending on your profession – working in the train can be very effective. I work two hours in the high speed train every day and I get more tasks done in the train than in the office.

VFRonTop wrote:

N14AZ wrote:

lightmac wrote:

Despite Greta Thunberg Germany's seven top cities are connected to each other with up to 25 flights daily!

To which connection are you referring to? That would be equal to one flight every hour all day long. Perverted. Considering a curfew at one of the two cities, even more flights per hour. So which city-pair is it?

Below is the average summer schedule for MUC to TXL. 22 flights (one way), with 4 operated by U2 and the rest operated by LH. Similar schedule for the TXL to MUC leg.

06h30 LH
07h00 LH
07h30 LH
08h00 LH
08h30 LH
08h40 U2
09h00 LH
10h15 U2
11h00 LH
12h00 LH
13h00 LH
14h05 LH
15h00 LH
16h00 LH
17h00 LH
17h30 LH
18h00 LH
18h45 U2
19h00 LH
19h40 U2
20h00 LH
21h30 LH

Thank you for your comprehensive list (by the way, where is the Thread-Opener? He never answered the question to which connection he was referring to…).
It has been discussed many times – one would think that LH might be able to merge at least two or even three flights to one widebody flight (as they used to do, by the way, with their A300, e.g. FRA-HAM vv.). But the reality is that it’s more efficient for LH to cover the demand with narrowbodies only.

leghorn wrote:

vfw614 wrote:

95 € for peak time travel (monday morning) is not expensive. Ryanair is artificially inexpensive. Or are you suggesting that 13 € for a flight DUB-STN is a realistic price for the service provided?

Yes, €95 is expensive for standard class rail fare.

Mannhem - Berlin is a 620km road trip. What kind of fare do you expect for such a distance if you consider a walk-up fare of 95 € too expensive? If you take the plane from Mannheim, you will be lucky to get a 179 EUR fare (but probably not on monday mornings). If ou take a flight from Frankfurt, how do you get there from Mannhein without forking out money on top of the flight ticket?

70 to 80 for a return ticket outside peak. Maybe 100 to 120 peak.

oschkosch wrote:

mjoelnir wrote:

oschkosch wrote:

Let me explain why the MUC and FRA hubs have so many feeder flights. Say you live up north, close to BRE or HAM. Need to get to say BUD or or any city in Europe. In case there is no FR or W6 flight, you need to go through MUC or FRA on LH. No point taking a train down there, so 2 LH flights to get to your destination.

If you live near HAM you go to BUD or OTP from there. If you live near Bremen you can drive to Hamburg and take the direct connection. TAROM flies you to Bucharest and Eurowings to Budapest. Europe is pretty well covered.
What is missing in HAM is long haul, especially going west. You fly to MUC or FRA to go to the USA for example. (or KEF)

BUD or OTP are just examples. Replace by CLJ, BEG, TIR, BCN, MXP, whatever.

Perhaps you should not take examples out of thin air, because you do not expect there to be a flight.

MXP, you fly with Eurowings from HAM
BCN, you can take Ryanair or Vueling from HAM
TIR starts on Albawings end of March
BEG is seasonal on Air Serbia

HAM does not offer a direct flight to CLJ, but would it not be perhaps more sensible to travel through OTP than FRA or MUC?

Perhaps you should not dismiss things with whatever and perhaps accept that you did not have a good argument. You have to try obscure destination and you still miss the mark.
The flights HAM to FRA , MUC and DUS are to catch long haul or you have to do something there. There will be exceptions as always, but that is a very small percentage.

leghorn wrote:

70 to 80 for a return ticket outside peak. Maybe 100 to 120 peak.

Fares start at 27€ (w/BC) / 34€ for a return.

dazeflight wrote:

leghorn wrote:

70 to 80 for a return ticket outside peak. Maybe 100 to 120 peak.

Fares start at 27€ (w/BC) / 34€ for a return.

not many infrequent travellers have a bahncard and unlike Ryanair or Flixbus these are teaser fares rather than regular low fares.
People are travelling from Ireland to UK regularly with Ryanair fares under 50 euro return.

mjoelnir wrote:

oschkosch wrote:

mjoelnir wrote:

If you live near HAM you go to BUD or OTP from there. If you live near Bremen you can drive to Hamburg and take the direct connection. TAROM flies you to Bucharest and Eurowings to Budapest. Europe is pretty well covered.
What is missing in HAM is long haul, especially going west. You fly to MUC or FRA to go to the USA for example. (or KEF)

BUD or OTP are just examples. Replace by CLJ, BEG, TIR, BCN, MXP, whatever.

Perhaps you should not take examples out of thin air, because you do not expect there to be a flight.

MXP, you fly with Eurowings from HAM
BCN, you can take Ryanair or Vueling from HAM
TIR starts on Albawings end of March
BEG is seasonal on Air Serbia

HAM does not offer a direct flight to CLJ, but would it not be perhaps more sensible to travel through OTP than FRA or MUC?

Perhaps you should not dismiss things with whatever and perhaps accept that you did not have a good argument. You have to try obscure destination and you still miss the mark.
The flights HAM to FRA , MUC and DUS are to catch long haul or you have to do something there. There will be exceptions as always, but that is a very small percentage.

ok..... HAJ is my local airport. Get me to CLJ, BEG, MAD, OTP, TIR, MXP whatever. I do HAJ - FRA or MUC and connect onwards to another destination in Europe nearly every week.

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N14AZ wrote:

It has been discussed many times – one would think that LH might be able to merge at least two or even three flights to one widebody flight (as they used to do, by the way, with their A300, e.g. FRA-HAM vv.). But the reality is that it’s more efficient for LH to cover the demand with narrowbodies only.

I don't think we will see WBs on these domestic routes for a few reasons:

• the corporate and government market want frequency and flexibility, not capacity.
• connecting traffic is the same, wanting multiple options to enable short connecting times between flights.
• WB aircraft are not suited or efficient on these short hop rotations
• while some DE airports are slot coordinated they are not heavily slot restricted therefore there is capacity at the airports to operate these high frequency routes

Basically LH can make more money with WBs flying longhaul and NBs operating these shuttle services.

leghorn wrote:

dazeflight wrote:

leghorn wrote:

70 to 80 for a return ticket outside peak. Maybe 100 to 120 peak.

Fares start at 27€ (w/BC) / 34€ for a return.

not many infrequent travellers have a bahncard and unlike Ryanair or Flixbus these are teaser fares rather than regular low fares.
People are travelling from Ireland to UK regularly with Ryanair fares under 50 euro return.

34€ are without a Bahncard. For the peak prices quoted earlier, a BC25 already pays for itself after two returns, so it's no-brainer. And no, these are not teaser fares, but always available as long as they are not sold out. DB nowadays has exactly the same yield management system as airlines, with one notable difference: there is a maximum price. Again: trying to make DB look super expensive with flawed comparisons to some UK FR fares is not working out.

YYZLGA wrote:

It shows the comparative weakness of the German high-speed rail network compared with France, for example. Compare travel times between major cities at comparable distance. It's routinely double or more.

SCQ83 wrote:

So flying is not such a bad alternative compared to a country like Spain which has far superior road and train networks as of today.

You both seem to look very selectively at what a rail network delivers.
French and Spanish high-speed rail are very efficient, as they are new and have the almost single task of moving people from large and middle sized cities to the capital (and Barcelona to some extant in Spain) of countries with a rather low population density and huge disparities, as the countrysides are rather empty. If you ever have the misfortune of leaving those corridors, you'll end up nowhere.
On the other hand, German network is a very comprehensive network, in a country with double the population density of the two aforementioned and a large number of middle sized cities. It means that Germany made the choice of a network serving most of the population rather than just the largest cities, to which it is efficient.

I would add to that the fact that the Spanish high-speed network is almost segregated from the conventional one using a different track gauge, making it immune to influence of other traffic.

So these systems have different characteristics, linked to those of their respective countries and to say that one is "far superior", you need to take into account only one very specific criteria. That being said, it is true that, on long distance between large cities, the German network is not impressively fast, which probably explains in part the relatively large domestic air network.

I'm not going to be convinced that DB is value for money. I've been let down by it when I've used it and when I have priced it on many occassions it has been simply too expensive.
It seems that I'm not in the minority in Germany but that doesn't stop the politicians trying to tilt the table in its favour and excluding free market competition in so much as they can.

Toinou wrote:

YYZLGA wrote:

It shows the comparative weakness of the German high-speed rail network compared with France, for example. Compare travel times between major cities at comparable distance. It's routinely double or more.

SCQ83 wrote:

So flying is not such a bad alternative compared to a country like Spain which has far superior road and train networks as of today.

You both seem to look very selectively at what a rail network delivers.
French and Spanish high-speed rail are very efficient, as they are new and have the almost single task of moving people from large and middle sized cities to the capital (and Barcelona to some extant in Spain) of countries with a rather low population density and huge disparities, as the countrysides are rather empty. If you ever have the misfortune of leaving those corridors, you'll end up nowhere.
On the other hand, German network is a very comprehensive network, in a country with double the population density of the two aforementioned and a large number of middle sized cities. It means that Germany made the choice of a network serving most of the population rather than just the largest cities, to which it is efficient.

I would add to that the fact that the Spanish high-speed network is almost segregated from the conventional one using a different track gauge, making it immune to influence of other traffic.

So these systems have different characteristics, linked to those of their respective countries and to say that one is "far superior", you need to take into account only one very specific criteria. That being said, it is true that, on long distance between large cities, the German network is not impressively fast, which probably explains in part the relatively large domestic air network.

True. Take something like Bordeaux-Lyon for example: 5:30 by car, quickest connection by train is almost 7 hours, with most ones between 7:23 and 8:23. The systems in France and Spain are usually not good in providing quick tangential connections. The main reason is the vastly different distribution of population centres compared to Germany.

oschkosch wrote:

ok..... HAJ is my local airport. Get me to CLJ, BEG, MAD, OTP, TIR, MXP whatever. I do HAJ - FRA or MUC and connect onwards to another destination in Europe nearly every week.

It's a little bit off-topic but I am curious since HAJ is my base as well. From 2006 to 2011 I flew reguarly to OTP. CZ via PRG was always the "best-buy". Is LH now more competitive?

To CLJ I also took LH (via MUC or via FRA). I wouldn't have flown to OTP first and than "backwards" to CLJ, especially since the flights OTP-CLJ (ATR) were cancelled from time to time.

leghorn wrote:

I'm not going to be convinced that DB is value for money. I've been let down by it when I've used it and when I have priced it on many occassions it has been simply too expensive.
It seems that I'm not in the minority in Germany but that doesn't stop the politicians trying to tilt the table in its favour and excluding free market competition in so much as they can.

It's funny to read this stuff cooked under a tinfoil-hat when kerosene is not taxed in Germany, car commuting is heavily subsidized, long distance buses don't need to pay any toll and flixtrain as a major competitor to be has just extended services (with the main reason being so slow in expanding being the major investments required in rolling material).

In any case you seem to be trying to defend that opinion you've once made at any cost, even if your arguments are proven untrue. But well, that's one person less who grabs one of the cheaper tickets.

N14AZ wrote:

oschkosch wrote:

ok..... HAJ is my local airport. Get me to CLJ, BEG, MAD, OTP, TIR, MXP whatever. I do HAJ - FRA or MUC and connect onwards to another destination in Europe nearly every week.

It's a little bit off-topic but I am curious since HAJ is my base as well. From 2006 to 2011 I flew reguarly to OTP. CZ via PRG was always the "best-buy". Is LH now more competitive?

To CLJ I also took LH (via MUC or via FRA). I wouldn't have flown to OTP first and than "backwards" to CLJ, especially since the flights OTP-CLJ (ATR) were cancelled from time to time.

There are no CZ flights to PRG anymore since a few years now. I usually drive down to DUS and take CZ or EW from there to get to PRG. Or drive by car 6 hours.


I sometimes do HAJ-MUC-OTP and return flight SOF-MUC-FRA. Normally on LH incl luggage 300 Euro.

dazeflight wrote:

leghorn wrote:

I'm not going to be convinced that DB is value for money. I've been let down by it when I've used it and when I have priced it on many occassions it has been simply too expensive.
It seems that I'm not in the minority in Germany but that doesn't stop the politicians trying to tilt the table in its favour and excluding free market competition in so much as they can.

It's funny to read this stuff cooked under a tinfoil-hat when kerosene is not taxed in Germany, car commuting is heavily subsidized, long distance buses don't need to pay any toll and flixtrain as a major competitor to be has just extended services (with the main reason being so slow in expanding being the major investments required in rolling material).

In any case you seem to be trying to defend that opinion you've once made at any cost, even if your arguments are proven untrue. But well, that's one person less who grabs one of the cheaper tickets.

Tinfoil hat? I have direct experience when consuming the service or by-passing it for a better alternative.
I see you attempt to diminish my contribution is because you can't defend the poor, expensive service delivered by DB on those occassions when they are bothered enough to deliver it.
Flixbus trains represent a tiny proportion of all the services on very few routes. Airlines/Customers are paying much more in APD than they would pay through a tax on aviation fuel. Diesel fuel is at around 1.30 euro litre, petrol at about 1.40 per litre so by no stretch of the imagination can travelling by car be considered heavily subsidized(outside of pendler trips to work). Private bus services should NEVER be subject to toll if the objective is to give people an alternative to private transport and I see mwst at 19% on the receipt for one of my last Flixbus trips.

You are not approaching the discussion at all honestly. You are cherry-picking fares from their booking systems where as I give real examples of fares which those who wish to travel can reasonably expect to pay on a LCC between two other EU member states.
The protectionism of the DB and Lufthansa in DACH must be ended because it is costing the public dearly.

steman wrote:

Deutsche-Bahn offers a limited alternative to domestic air transport.
Prices are very high and travel times not what one would expect from "high speed" railways.
Things are changing, with new faster, more direct connections but for the most part the German railway company
prefers to serve every small city on the way, making journey times much longer.
As an example, some years ago I used to commute between Mannheim and Berlin, a journey time of about 5 hours for a little over 600 km. The train used to stop at Frankfurt Main, Hanau, Fulda, Göttingen, Hildesheim, Wolfsburg, Berlin Spandau and finally Berlin main station. Even the so called (more expensive) Sprinter between Frankfurt and Berlin, with no intermediate stops, was still about 4 hours, a distance shorter than the one between Rome and Milan, which the Italian Railway Companies make in less than 3 hours and with lower prices.
More recently, last year I had to go to a wedding in the black forest and I ended up booking an Easyjet flight between TXL and FRA and get a rental car at FRA because it was still cheaper than taking a train.
So, in my opinion, as long as Deutsche Bahn charges such high prices and has such long travel times, domestic flights in Germany will not shrink, regardless of what many politicians say.

Not to mention DB is a royal pain to travel on as a family with a bunch of luggage pieces. My own family found this out the hard way last June. It was so hard to do, we ended up just renting a car.

leghorn wrote:

I'm not going to be convinced that DB is value for money. I've been let down by it when I've used it and when I have priced it on many occassions it has been simply too expensive.
It seems that I'm not in the minority in Germany but that doesn't stop the politicians trying to tilt the table in its favour and excluding free market competition in so much as they can.

Given that ICE-trains are full to the rafters and are attracting more and more travellers, I am not sure that you are indeed representing the majority. The discussion is also moot to some extent as Lufthansa will replace more and more domestic routes with AiRail offers. They are continously expanding that service.

I am slightly amused that German Rail is told off here for being unreliable. Admittedly, it is not a clock-work like Japanese Rail, but overall I have not experienced more heavy delays travelling domestically by train than on Lufthansa and its affiliates (and I am travelling a lot, I have frequent traveller status both with Lufthansa and German Rail). Even if a train is delayed, there are usually alternative options that can be used unless you are travelling to some remote place that sees ICE services just once or twice a day. Snafus happen here and there. One issue with train travel is that no advance reservations are required so that trains can get overcrowded, but that is just the downside of an extremely flexible transport system. Others will find security procedures and the unpredictability of wait times at certain airports more annoying.

Generally speaking, for short term travel German Rail offers better value for money for me as domestic fares tend to be extremely high since airberlin, dba & hlx have disappeared. I have paid north of 300 EUR for 60 minute Eurowings flights and this did include nothing - not a seat reservation, no luggage, no drink, absolutely nothing except a seat. I have never been charged so much for so little by German Rail even in 1st class.

vfw614 wrote:

Generally speaking, for short term travel German Rail offers better value for money for me as domestic fares tend to be extremely high since airberlin, dba & hlx have disappeared. I have paid north of 300 EUR for 60 minute Eurowings flights and this did include nothing - not a seat reservation, no luggage, no drink, absolutely nothing except a seat. I have never been charged so much for so little by German Rail even in 1st class.

Based on your experience of airfares don't you think that Ryanair are the Octopus that would like to figure out how to get in to that corked bottle if they could only figure out how to. The fact that they haven't figured out to speaks volumes about barriers to entry in Germany.
My last flights with Ryanair from FRA have been averaging less than 50 euro return on a distance of about 1400km. Ryanair could have twice the number of flights on the same airframe if they could only unlock the German market.

leghorn wrote:

but that doesn't stop the politicians trying to tilt the table in its favour and excluding free market competition in so much as they can.

If they do they are not very successful about it...

There are ~400 private train companies that have captured ~50% of Cargo, 22% of local passenger traffic, and 1~2% of Long distance train service. Cargo has the lowest, by far, entry costs for new players, followed by local trains and starting a long distance train operation costs more than setting up an Airline..... the Problem with long distance passenger trains would appear to be the customers not buying tickets....

And look at the competition:
Flixtrain: has rolling stock even Deutsche Bahn discarded
Locomore: ran out of money after half a year, and ran rolling stock the Dutch had discarded (different from Flix at least somewhat refurbished)
HKX: ran out of money, and ran rolling stock dusted off from GDR Reichsbahn stock.....

There is EU Directive 2001/14/EC in Force and if they tried blocking competition Germany would be sued and lose rather quickly.

best regards
Thomas

tommy1808 wrote:

leghorn wrote:

but that doesn't stop the politicians trying to tilt the table in its favour and excluding free market competition in so much as they can.

If they do they are not very successful about it...

There are ~400 private train companies that have captured ~50% of Cargo, 22% of local passenger traffic, and 1~2% of Long distance train service. Cargo has the lowest, by far, entry costs for new players, followed by local trains and starting a long distance train operation costs more than setting up an Airline..... the Problem with long distance passenger trains would appear to be the customers not buying tickets....

And look at the competition:
Flixtrain: has rolling stock even Deutsche Bahn discarded
Locomore: ran out of money after half a year, and ran rolling stock the Dutch had discarded (different from Flix at least somewhat refurbished)
HKX: ran out of money, and ran rolling stock dusted off from GDR Reichsbahn stock.....

There is EU Directive 2001/14/EC in Force and if they tried blocking competition Germany would be sued and lose rather quickly.

best regards
Thomas

DLF told me last week that 90% of freight is carried by LKW, not train. German freight traffic by train is not highly desired.