National Express

From Free net encyclopedia

This article is about the company responsible for most long distance bus and coach services in the UK and the brand it uses; for information on the owning group, see the National Express Group article.

Image:National Express Logo.gifNational Express is the brand under which the majority of long distance bus and coach service in the United Kingdom are marketed, and also the company which manages this network and operates some of the services. Many other services are subcontracted to other local bus companies throughout the UK.

The brand and company are based in Birmingham and are themselves owned by the National Express Group, a group of diverse transport interests also including passenger rail operators and local bus operators.

1 History
2 Service Brands
3 Discount Fare Brands
4 Destinations (among others)
5 External links

[edit]

History

Image:National Express Coach.jpg

The National Express brand was first created in 1972 by the state owned National Bus Company (NBC) to bring together the express bus and coach services operated by the various bus operating companies within the NBC group. The National Express network was largely a branding and management exercise, with services continuing to be operated by the various bus companies in the NBC group.

With the privatisation of the NBC in the 1980s, National Express was privatised through a management buy-out in 1988. In 1992, the National Express Group PLC was floated on the London Stock Exchange with a remit to acquire new businesses in the passenger transport market, and National Express became a subsidiary company within that group.

National Express has, for most of its existence, had little competition, except from the railways, with few other operators running long-distance coach services. However, in 2003 Stagecoach Group introduced a "no-frills" service, Megabus, whose GBP £1 fares sparked a price war with National Express in autumn 2004.

[edit]

Service Brands

Shuttle

Frequent services from London operate as National Express Shuttle services. Most of these services operate at least one hour and operate over a more direct route than some other services, which deviate from the direct route to serve smaller destinations. The London - Birmingham and London - Bristol services are marketed as NXL (National Express London) services and operate with attractive Irizar PB / Scania K124 coaches, unusually the Birmingham - London service is operated directly by National Express and not franchised out.

Shuttle services:- From / To London

025 - Gatwick Airport and Brighton
032 - Southampton
035 - Bournemouth
040 - Bristol (NXL Shuttle)
420 - Birmingham and Wolverhampton (NXL Shuttle)

Non London Shuttle services

060 - Leeds - Manchester - Liverpool

Airport

The National Express Airport services operate to a variety of destinations from London Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton and Stansted. The Airport brand was created in 2003 when the National Express image brand was updated, it merged together the former Airlink, Flightlink and Jetlink brands which were especially confusing to passengers travelling between Heathrow and Gatwick airport. Most coaches on these services operate with the National Express Airport brand (the airport being in white inside a red box below the 'National Express' name on the side of the coach). The exception to this is the 210 service between Wolverhampton and Gatwick Airport, operated by fellow National Express Group company Travel West Midlands for which new vehicles were purchased in early 2006 for and only carry the standard National Express livery, it is not unusual to see 'Airport' coaches on other services either.

Selection of Airport services

200 - Gatwick Airport - Heathrow Airport - Reading - Bristol
205 - Gatwick Airport - Heathrow Airport - Southampton - Bournemouth - Portsmouth
201 - Gatwick Airport - Heathrow Airport - Newport - Cardiff - Swansea
210 - Gatwick Airport - Heathrow Airport - Banbury - Birmingham - Wolverhampton
230 - Gatwick Airport - Heathrow Airport - Milton Keynes - Leicester - Nottingham
240 - Bradford - Leeds - Sheffield - Nottingham East Midlands Airport - Coventry - Heathrow Airport - Gatwick Airport
777 - Stansted Airport - Luton Airport - Birmingham

[edit]

Discount Fare Brands

NX2 Card

Available to Students and young people between 16 and 25 the NX2 allows passengers to get up to 30% off coach travel for either 1 year or 3 years. They also offer further internet based special offers, for instance fixed price return fares to anywhere over a certain period.

Funfares

Launched as a result of impending competition from easyBus and Megabus funfares are cheap single fares, some as low as £1, which the customer can only purchase on the internet and are issued an 'e-ticket', similar to low fare airlines where the passenger prints off their own ticket and thus reducing overheads. Further restrictions are put on these tickets such as the inability to change the time on the ticket or travel on a different coach. Funfares were first launched on Shuttle services but have since been rolled out across the network. A certain percentage of seats on off-peak services can be booked in this way.

[edit]