About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

National Express

Encyclopedia : N : NA : NAT : National Express

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.
National 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 that manages this network and operates some of the services. Many other services are subcontracted to local bus companies throughout the UK.

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

Contents

History

A Scania K124 EB Irizar of National Express pictured in Cambridge
Enlarge
A Scania K124 EB Irizar of National Express pictured in Cambridge

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


With the privatisation of the NBC in the 1980s, National Express was subject to a management buy-out in 1988. In 1992, National Express Group plc was floated on the London Stock Exchange with a remit to acquire new businesses in the passenger transport market, with National Express as a subsidiary company.


For most of its existence National Express has had little competition from coach operators, with few 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.



Service Brands



Shuttle


Frequent services from London operate as National Express Shuttle services. Most of these services operate at least once an hour and operate over direct routes - some other services deviate 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 London - Birmingham service is operated directly by National Express and is not franchised out.


Shuttle services:-
From / To London


Non-London Shuttle services



Airport


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 the former Airlink, Flightlink and Jetlink brands, which were confusing, especially 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 National Express Group company Travel West Midlands, for which new vehicles purchased in early 2006 carry the standard National Express livery. It is not unusual to see 'Airport' coaches on other services.


Selection of Airport services



Discount Fare Brands


NX2 Card


Available to students and young people between 16 and 25, the NX2 allows passengers up to 30% off coach travel for either one or three years. It also offers 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, purchased only on the internet as an 'e-ticket', similar to low-fare airlines, thus reducing overheads. Further restrictions are put on these tickets such as the inability to change the time on the ticket or to travel on a different coach. Funfares were launched on Shuttle services but have since been rolled out across the network. A percentage of seats on off-peak services can be booked in this way.



Major Destinations



External links












 





From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.














Search Titles









0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?










E-mail this article to:



Personal Message: