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What’s an Etihad train?Why bundling trains and planes doesn’t work
For a while, Etihad has been running a bus between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. These vehicles even have their own EY flight numbers, and they’re classed as a “connecting flight” if you board the bus and then get a plane. That made some sense, as it’s a single journey from one major city to another in the UAE. Recently Etihad has started bundling trains into UK originating journeys, and the option is – quite frankly – horrible
What’s an Etihad train?
This isn’t really a train run by Etihad. It’s one that they suggest in their booking process in order to get you from A to B. It’s not branded Etihad, but it does have it’s own EY flight number. Helpfully it’s also labeled as a train, for example “EY 8777 Train” which will take you from Manchester to London.
(There is quite a significant rail project called Etihad Rail – completely unrelated to the airline, and this post)
Why is this a bad idea?
Let’s look at some flight options presented to us when we search for Manchester to Singapore on Etihad.com.
The obvious route is to fly from MAN to Abu Dhabi, then take a connecting flight to SIN. If you enter MAN to SIN into Etihad this is the first option that appears.
The second option immediately looks suspect. It’s 35hrs, vs the 17hrs you need for the flight that stops over in Abu Dhabi. You can see in the screenshot below that the second option is two stops, and close to 36 hours of travel time.
Open up the details of this flight and you’ll see a journey that would best be described as interesting.
You’ll take a train from Manchester Piccadilly to Crewe. You have three minutes to then connect to another train to Euston. Then you take another train to London City Airport (allegedly on Avanti Trains). You then have a total of one whole minute to take another connecting train (also via Avanti) to Heathrow. Then you have a wait of 15 hours till you take your first flight of this journey, going from LHR to Abu Dhabi with Etihad.
So what’s happening here? Firstly, it seems like Etihad is trying to make every journey possible by linking into the UK train network. In theory that could be helpful, but in action the results presented are deeply inefficient.
A little bit of digging shows that the rail part of the booking is run by AccesRail, a Canadian organisation that specialise in linking train and plane travel.
There’s no need to connect in Crewe when there are multiple direct trains from Manchester to London Euston every hour. There’s also no Avanti train to London City from Euston – they’re most likely including a London Underground ticket in the price via Avanti. Connecting via London City also makes no sense, there are more sensible routes across to Heathrow.
Etihad’s booking engine does not allow you to select a start point other than an airport. You can’t just pick a town in the UK and get a flight option that starts with a train, which could be a useful option. If bunding a train and a plane gives you a cost saving, or it includes rebooking protection if a train was delayed.
Dummy bookings for Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow, don’t bring up any train options. They do throw up some quite unique connecting flights however. Fancy a 13hr layover in Dublin when you’re travelling from Glasgow to Abu Dhabi?
Birmingham does give you train options, in fact four of the five options returned to me for Birmgham to AUH included a train at the start of the journey. Travelling on the 12th Jan 2024 means you’ll be taking a similar route from Manchester: Avanti to Euston, then LCY, then LHR for your flight.
