Irish Rail Flexible Tickets

RedRochey

Booked the train home for this weekend and was surprised that the low and semi flexible tickets were sold out, I booked the tickets on Monday and I would usually be able to get the cheaper ones even during the college year, so I thought it would be easier to get them during the summer.

As I know which weekend I will be heading home again I decide to see what the tickets would be like for then (end of August), and again the low and semi-flexible tickets were sold out, so I clicked on the more expensive ticket to just see how many people had already bought tickets, there was only 8! Now I know there is only a certain amount of low and semi-flexible tickets available but there's surely more than 8!

Emailed Irish Rail and asked why there wasn't any low or semi-flexible tickets left and they said because Friday is the busiest train that tickets sell out quickly, which is obviously a lie.

Can someone explain why Irish Rail are only selling the more expensive flexible tickets for Friday trains? The low flexible tickets are half the price of the flexible ones.

Given the trains are so busy you would imagine that they would be against someone buying a flexible ticket, booking a seat, but then not turning up because they have that flexibility to get an earlier or later train

gwalk

StockTwat29 wrote: »

Can someone explain why Irish Rail are only selling the more expensive flexible tickets for Friday trains?

You'd have to ask Irish Rail about that

Jamie2k9

A few trains have no low tickets available and others have a handful. Semi Flexible rarely sells out unless its heavily booked.

It's supply and demand, expecting low tickets on busy days without booking well in advance won't happen.

RedRochey

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

A few trains have no low tickets available and others have a handful. Semi Flexible rarely sells out unless its heavily booked.

It's supply and demand, expecting low tickets on busy days without booking well in advance won't happen.

I checked the 6th of September, train is completely empty yet there is only the more expensive fully flexible tickets available

Jamie2k9

StockTwat29 wrote: »

I checked the 6th of September, train is completely empty yet there is only the more expensive fully flexible tickets available

Yes, it's probably an extremely busy service so lower tickets are not available. Revenue management and the whole point of new ticket types. Those price sensitive customers will move to other services and enable better capacity management.

Losty Dublin

StockTwat29 wrote: »

I checked the 6th of September, train is completely empty yet there is only the more expensive fully flexible tickets available

Friday's are generally a busy day on Inter City trains so it would follow that there may be less of the cheaper tickets left or made available to passengers.