National Express expects to carry more than 500,000 passengers on its scheduled coach services across the festive period between 22 December and 5 January 2025, it says.
Additional capacity will be provided on some services over that time to take account of a natural spike in demand and that created by disruption to rail services. A claimed more than 30,000 extra seats will be provided and the business and its partner operators will run more than 340 journeys serving 95 locations on Christmas Day alone.
The over half-million-passengers expectation by National Express across the 15-day period cited amounts to an average of more than 33,000 travellers per day, or around 630 full 53-seat coach loads.
Additional capacity will be deployed to routes including those connecting London with Luton and Stansted airports; London and Bristol; Liverpool and Leeds via the M62 corridor; South Wales and Gatwick Airport; Great Yarmouth and London; Rochdale and London; and Liverpool and London.
National Express Commercial Director John Boughton says that the business has sufficient flexibility “to add extra capacity on our busiest intercity and airport routes to help as many people as possible to get home to spend the holidays with family and friends.”
Mr Boughton adds that demand for National Express services over the Christmas period is “huge,” with engineering work and possible last-minute disruption on the rail network contributing to ticket sales. “We are proud once again to be stepping up to provide a dependable and affordable public transport service for our customers,” he continues.
Other scheduled coach networks will also run across the festive period. In a sign of the competitive marketplace, National Express is offering a 10% discount across December with the promotional code DEC10, while it is also providing 10,000 free child places for travel until 6 January 2025 via the code FREEKIDS.
