The first country to be hit by the volcanic ash from Iceland was the United Kingdom, where flights were stopped from last Thursday. Both Heathrow and Gatwick airports are standing still and empty, as the UK media and airlines are sending the message not to go to the airport and try to solve the travel issues at home via phone or internet. At 13:30 Monday Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express PR spokesman Stephen Forster reported that they are running normal services to the airports, but people are asking – is it necessary?

“Heathrow Express just went by. I counted 3 passengers on board. Why not run a restricted service?” asks one twitter user.

And he is not the only one:

“I wonder if anyone is actually using Heathrow Express, Gatwick Express and Stansted Express trains today? What with no flights and all...”

“I seem to have the entire Heathrow Express to myself. Eerie.”

“The Gatwick Express is eerily empty! Surprised it is still running.”

“Gatwick Express train is empty. They may as well just cancel it. No one will get it just to get about. It costs x5 more than regular trains.”

These are the latest tweets from London travellers.

And they are quite right, with almost no traffic to the airports, some European airport expresses are taking steps to reduce the costs of running empty trains.

Vienna City Airport Train (CAT) is offering to extend ticket validation that were booked for 16th April and on 19th April they started running free services between the city and the airport. Already paid CAT-tickets can be reused till 16th May 2010.

Scandinavian airport expresses Arlanda Express in Stockholm and Flytoget in Oslo are running reduced services.

”When the airport is closed we reduce our service to one departure per hour, when the airport operates with reduced capacity we run three trains per hour. Normally we run 6 trains per hour, with up to 23,000 passengers a day. So the last few days we were losing approximately NOK 2,5 m (EUR 300,000) in sales every day!”, Sverre Høven, Commercial Manager of Flytoget said to airrail NEWS.

Arlanda Express website also informs that they are running two trains per hour.

Aeroexpress Moscow’s airport rail service to three city airports informed airrail NEWS that they are running according to schedule, although they do compensate passengers.

“Passengers who booked e-tickets on the Aeroexpress web-site and did not use the rail service due to cancelled or postponed flights will be entitled to rebook a ticket within one week from the current date with an option to adjust their departure time as soon as they have their new flight time confirmed,” says the company press release.

So it seems that not all rail companies are counting their additional income due to unfortunate air closure.

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