Tuesday 19th September 2023
First Group has had a sizeable Aircoach operation in Ireland for many years but yesterday it launched its inaugural route in the UK comprising an hourly service between Leicester and Birmingham Airport running 24/7.
Four five-year old Mercedes Sprinter 16-seat minibuses have been shipped over from Ireland to run the new service.
Journey time is 65 minutes during the night increasing to a standard 70 minutes for daytime Leicester bound journeys and 75 minutes for journeys to Birmingham Airport.
Layover times at each end vary, meaning the timetable doesn’t have the same departure time each hour throughout the day.
It takes three minibuses to run the service.
First Bus has recruited 16 drivers at its Leicester base to run the service. With that level of resource it’s got to earn decent revenue to become viable.
Only single leg tickets are available costing £9 if booked online or £16 for a walk-up pay-the-driver fare which doesn’t come with a guaranteed seat.
Online booking is on a dedicated Aircoach website for the UK and the layout gives a strong hint other services will follow in due course with passengers having to specify which service they’re booking on when of course there is just the one at the moment.
Mind you, it similarly asks you to specify the type of ticket even though only singles are available.
I took a ride on the 12:00 departure from Leicester’s revamped St Margaret’s bus station yesterday, the service’s first day, having booked my ticket online on Sunday afternoon which I found very easy and straightforward to do.
You get sent an email with a 12 letter booking code and a QR code to confirm the guaranteed seat, although the driver’s ticket machine couldn’t read the QR code and he entered my booking code into his tablet.
If travel plans change (eg a delayed plane) you can switch to a later journey but only if seats are available when the minibus arrives.
The timetable showed the minibus arriving in Leicester from its previous journey at 11:25 but it didn’t arrive until 11:43 and the drivers swapped over. Interestingly another minibus arrived about 10 minutes later which was the next journey arriving well ahead of schedule.
It was noticeable how the minibus I was boarding was attracting attention with two or three people walking over to ask the drivers about the new service.
A lady from the National Express booking office also came over too and the driver gave her details so it’s good to see sensible arrangements for information sharing especially as NatEx only provide six departures from Leicester to the Airport and interestingly I see are mostly charging £9.40.
Unsurprisingly for s first day, both minibuses had arrived with no passengers and it was just me on the journey to Birmingham Airport.
We left spot on 12:00 and had a good run out of Leicester with no one to pick up at the only stop on the route at the big Fosse Park retail area on the edge of the city. It was then a straight run from there on to the M69, M6 and M42 to the Airport.
With the three motorways behaving themselves we turned off the M42 at Junction 6 for the Airport/NEC/International station at 12:50 pulling up at the terminal bus stop (stop H) five minutes later knocking 20 minutes off the scheduled running time.
Driver Clive who’d joined First Bus to operate the service from coach operator Roberts kindly drove on to the nearby Birmingham International station where he dropped me off as he couldn’t layover for that length of time on the Airport bus departure stands.
We’d discussed on the journey that this would make for a useful addition to the schedule providing connections to a whole range of destinations by rail as well as serving the NEC.
The minibus itself has a smart interior, but is not accessible for those with mobility problems or using a wheelchair.
The front entrance isn’t exactly generous on width either.
The Aircoach website’s “Help and Support’ page advises passengers to “complete our contact form before booking so we can discuss your requirements with you.” It’s not clear what response you might expect.
The first offside double pair of seats behind the driver doesn’t look a particularly attractive proposition with a black outlook ahead and a poster on the offside window…
… so I’d recommend avoiding those seats. Contravision on some of the other windows also obscures the view.
Luggage can be stored in the rear boot with passengers restricted to a 15kg allowance as specified on the ticket when booked.
The online £9 fare is quite a bargain and while the £16 walk-up single journey option may look pricey, and compares unfavourably with a return fare of £22.60 (off-peak or £24.10 Anytime) by rail, that journey involves a change at Birmingham New Street and can take around 90 minutes.
It was good to see Leicester City Council had updated the timetable departure list display at stop SZ in St Margaret’s bus station to show the new Aircoach times….
… and I spotted some advertising in Leicester railway station.
Well, why not?
Running an hourly service round the clock is a brave move by First Bus, not known these days for its speculative ventures, but the company may well have spotted a gap in the market here. Whether that market is large enough to fund 16 drivers, four minibuses, around 650,000 operating miles a year and return a decent profit is another matter.
Roger French
Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS
BusAndTrainUser 
Not really new. First bus operate several dedicated airport services bit mot using the AIRCOACH brand
One would have thought that they would market them all under one brand. This one may be the first that serves an o a non London airport
First Bus operate an RA1, RA2 & RA3 airport services under the Railair branding. They even have there own web site
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Roger did point out that the Aircoach brand is used in Ireland, and this may be a UK expansion that will result in additional routes.
As regards other Airport services that First run. Three things to consider:
– Some are run on a concession or tender basis with things like branding clearly specified by the Airport; this is the case with Bristol, for example
– RailAir is a long established brand (over 40 years from Reading to Heathrow) so that might influence its retention as well as the branding emphasising that it acts as an extension of the railway which is very much its selling point
– Other routes, such as Essex Airlink, employ buses (albeit with high backed seating and luggage racks) and act (in part) as local buses as well as airport services so perhaps not appropriate to the Aircoach concept?
Whatever the thought, it’s certainly quite the investment from First. Without working out the maths, the use of minibuses is perhaps a means of keeping the cost low in this phase and establishing the route.
Let’s wish First the best with this venture; certainly seems to have more about it than the flawed Greyhound concept
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In my view it is just confusing. They are now using Railair, Railcoach and Airlink. Why? They are all airport services ?
There is no common web site where you find the information neither
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Different brands for different markets. Why does a potential passenger in Leicester need to know about a service from Reading to Heathrow?? IMHO, too many services in different areas on one website just promotes confusion … keep it simple is always best!!
greenline727
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Absolutely greenline727 – what anon 10:15 doesn’t appreciate is that a number of these are designated by the tendering airport authority e.g. Airport Flyer for Bristol.
You’re right that they are different markets and indeed, different products. Why rebrand RailAir when a) it’s an established brand and b) clearly connects (both physically and in terms of branding) the concept of linking from the rail network to Heathrow? Rebranding as Aircoach makes it like any other coach link when it clearly has a USP that it seeks to exploit.
That said, prior to being rebranded, in 2017, what is now Essex Airlink was branded as Aircoach! However, you are right – people aren’t going to be confused and perhaps there’s a difference between a full long distance coach service and one operated with bus shell vehicles and fulfilling different needs.
A further point – National Express in the 1990s rolled our Airlink (later Flightlink) for what were predominantly airport expresses but there were plenty of services not so branded that called in – e.g. most things that went via M4 – but weren’t so specifically aimed as a product.
BW2
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“Airlink (later Flightlink)”
Flightlink was of course a brand long before National Express started using it, Flights Coaches of Birmingham having been using it from (at least) the early 1980s until they sold out to NX Group.
The brand was deemed so recognisable and valuable that NX chose to use it in place of their own NX Airlink brand.
I don’t know what NX currently brand their airport services as, if anything, but then the NX coaching operation is now a shadow of its former self having been decimated by Covid – and before that by the resurgent railways. Long gone are the days of fleets of independents providing NX duplicates all over the country and of places like Birmingham’s Digbeth and London’s Victoria coach stations being where you’d see operators you’d never heard of from places you’d also never heard of!
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If I wanted to catch a bus from Leicester to Birmingham Airport I would either google it or look at the airport website. I would not look at a corporate website – possibly bustimes.org but that is it.
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Excellent news this morning FirstGroup
have been awarded a contract of up to nine years to run West Coast Main Line.
This is continues to underline FirstGroup as England’s lead provider of solutions to transport.
It also underlines the commitment to the DfT FirstGroup have given together with its understanding of users & staff & is in direct comparison to …..
(…. the rest of this comment has been moderated as not relevant to the topic of the blog.)
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Not sure if it is reality but it appears to me the various FirstBus co.panies now have greater freedom to ‘do there own thing’ which is good as hopefully local management will know the market better.
Matarredonda
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Interesting initiative from First, but I can’t help feeling that these buses are probably the most unsuitable vehicles for an airport service imaginable! It’s going to get very cosy with only a few passengers, particularly given some flyers’ idea of hand luggage is often of suitcase proportions….
Dan Tancock
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Birmingham airport is mainly budget airline flights so very seasonal also people are likely to have lots of luggage so vehicles’ are not really suitable. Unless the airport is subsidizing this service it will not last long. Probably need about 8 passengers per trip to break-even
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They’ve been used for a while on the London/Derry to Belfast airport routes that First took over. They probably already have a few miles on the clock
Paul Dredge
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I used to live in Lisbon. At that time the airport express bus service (premium price for casual passengers but Travelcard were accepted) used large coaches – very nice but steep entrance stairs. They were replaced by totally unsuitable Renault midibuses with little space for luggage. I’m afraid that this Aircoach will encounter similar difficulties.
There doesn’t seem to be a Lisbon airport express bus these days, presumably because the Metro now goes there.
Andrew Kleissner.
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Not correct to say first aircoach in the United Kingdom when aircoach operated to Northern Ireland. Misleading headline.
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I was confused when I read this article, it’s only Tuesday 19th and the article is dated Thursday 21st!
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There has never yet been a successful coach link from the East Midlands which has had Birmingham Airport as it’s target market rather than serving it as a stop en-route as National Express do (nor, for that matter, has there been one for East Midlands Airport – the various “airport” links to EMA are primarily to serve the huge logistics companies in the area, not the passenger terminal, despite the advertising).
I honestly can’t see this breaking that mould. It’s a brave move, but 15kg checked luggage is too low when the airline standard nowadays for scheduled flights is 20 or 23 kg – only charter flights have the 15 kg limit – and whilst it’s unlikely to be enforced by the minibus drivers, passengers used to scare stories about Ryanair et al demanding huge fees for overweight/oversize luggage aren’t going to take the risk, so that’s instantly reduced the target market.
I wish them well, but I doubt this operation will still be running this time next year.
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Looking at the airport web site there are very few night flights and they are probably still on their summer schedule at present so I do not see the night journeys lasting long
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Not even a paper destination in the windscreen on day one!
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Does it need one when it has the route details on the side?
BW2
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Well why have any destination screen on a bus by that logic?
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Because many buses don’t have the route detailed on the side in large lettering and they operate multiple routes from the same depot.
This is a minicoach on a dedicated route and with prominent branding but yes, that may not be enough so a scrap of A4 will definitely sort it
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They could do with the Aircoach name above the windscreen. Otherwise, the approaching vehicle is indistinguishable from the thousands of plain white vans that roam the roads.
Petras409
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