It’s time GTR got rid of First Class

Tuesday 12th August 2025

Chiltern did it in January 2003. Greater Anglia did it (except Norwich/London) in January 2020. c2c did it in July 2021. Southeastern did it in December 2022. London NorthWestern did it in May 2023. The Overground has never had it. The Elizabeth Line has never had it.

It’s about time GTR did away with First Class too. It was for another era that’s long past.

There’s already no First Class seating on Great Northern’s Class 717 trains between Moorgate and Welwyn Garden City/Stevenage.

First Class seats are declassified on Thameslink trains running between St Albans and the Wimbledon/Sutton loop as well as between Luton and Rainham.

And just to add to the confusion First Class seating in the rear carriage of Class 700 trains between Bedford and Brighton, Cambridge and Brighton and Peterborough and Horsham is also declassified but the same seats in the front carriage are not.

Here’s a quick test. You’re travelling from London Bridge to Luton with a standard class ticket. The next train to arrive is terminating at Luton and the train just behind is for Bedford. (a) in which train one can you legitimately sit in the front coach marked First Class and (b) which one can you legitimately sit in the rear coach marked First Class? Answer: (a) only the first train, not the second and (b) either.

Southern trains have 12 (some have 10) First Class seats at either end of a four coach Class 377 (also on Class 171 diesel units used on lines to Uckfield and Rye/Ashford – where the latter is declassified) with later five coach trains having seats allocated in the centre of the train and similarly Gatwick Express trains have a designated First Class area protected by doors in the middle of its Class 387s.

Great Northern Class 387 trains between KIngs Lynn, Ely, Cambridge and Kings Cross have a similarly designated area. They also have Class 379 trains between Letchworth Garden City and KIngs Cross.

The other South East train company still offering First Class is South Western Railway but only on trains between Waterloo and Alton, Basingstoke, Exeter St Davids, Poole/Weymouth and Portsmouth Harbour.

A First Class Anytime Day Return from Brighton to London Terminals costs £102. Standard Class costs £68. Passengers are paying £34 extra (50% more) for the benefit of what? Sitting in the same type of seat they’d sit in in Standard Class but with an antimacassar, which is only there to protect the seat back from soiling and if it’s that important, why do all the other seats in Standard Class get left out?

It’s common practice for passengers boarding at East Croydon and Clapham Junction travelling into Victoria to abuse the First Class designated seats and occupy them with Standard Class tickets which must be very annoying for passengers paying well over the odds to sit in the same type of seat for 50% more.

Even more so returning from Victoria, where on busy trains in the peaks, there are seldom any ticket checks and all seats get occupied meaning First Class ticket holders can lose out, especially if boarding at, say, Clapham Junction and the train is already ‘full to bursting’ as it often is.

The same phenomenon applies to Thameslink trains heading into London, especially at Gatwick Airport where the new layout brings London bound passengers from the concourse down to the front (London bound) end of platform 4 with them all piling into the front two or three coaches with their luggage.

Come East Croydon regilar commuters pile into the front carriage and know there’ll rarely be any ticket check. You can see this from just observing the train loading screen displayed every few minutes throughout the train and showing all carriages red or yellow. There’s no way that front First Class carriage (photographed below) is yellow because of First Class paying passengers.

The same applies in the Thameslink ‘core’ between London Bridge and St Pancras where passengers sit and stand anywhere including in the front carriage. And who can blame them, as on some trains (eg those to St Albans and Luton northbound and Wimbledon/Sutton and Rainham southbound), as mentioned above, the area is declassified.

Sales of First Class tickets have plummeted post Covid making their justification questionable. When capacity is at a premium why are we still pursuing a system to allow entitled passengers able to pay more, or charge their businesses for their travel, the privilege of having their own designated area?

The days of a more luxurious seat with complimentary refreshments have long gone. There’s no difference in the service being offered for the inflated price.

Another factor is the current confused allocation of trains across the GTR networks with Gatwick Express trains now used on both East and West Coastway routes as well as former Great Northern trains appearing anywhere. As these have First Class seating in different areas to other trains it makes it hard for passengers to know where to wait for a busy train.

Below is a plain white liveried train with Southern logos on a Gatwick Express journey at Hassocks one day last week. It’s anybody’s guess where you’d find the First Class designated seating (it’s actually the coach in the photograph, but you’d never know from the outside).

Over at Southeastern where some former Southern Class 377 trains are now operating on the network the First Class seating area has been re-designated to Standard Class with window stickers showing “1” and antimacassars removed as in the photo below.

You’d never know it previously had been First Class other than for the yellow band above the windows still on the outside of the train.

I can see a market for maintaining First Class on South Western Railway’s longer distance trains to Weymouth and Exeter St Davids, but I don’t think Alton and Portsmouth should qualify any longer.

It’s all one class of Standard seating on Greater Anglia’s Stansted Express and East Midlands Railway’s Connect/Luton Airport Express service to Luton AIrport so why not on Gatwick Express too? There’s no logic in having such a differential. And all the more so as the Gatwick Express branding is a confused mess

Let’s not wait for the “coming soon” Great British Railways circa 2027 for a decision. Let’s act now and cease First Class in the South East.

Having written the foregoing, news broke last week Chiltern are bringing back First Class when it puts former Mark 5 coaches used by TransPennine Express on its network next year particularly on the long distance route to Birmingham and Stourbridge, which makes sense for that market. It’s reported this will save the cost of reconfiguring the coaches.

Interestingly the Mark 3 coaches they’re replacing used to have a Business Class coach – a bit like Avanti’s Standard Premium – but this has ceased to apply since Covid although is still marked as such on the trains.

Roger French

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