“Train + Air” journeys are getting a new lease on life. From this Thursday, the first customers will use 100% digital tickets to make a train journey, then a plane journey. Until then, the “combined ticket” formula obliged the traveler to collect his train ticket in paper format at a station counter. This time, he will be able to check in 30 hours before his flight, and therefore directly download his train ticket, like his plane ticket, in digital format.
“After a year of experimentation, we launched the first sales with Air France in fully digitalized mode on July 19, 2022. 40,000 tickets have already been sold,” says SNCF Voyageurs. “It’s a facility that we bring to the consumer, summarizes Coralie Abalain, head of intermodality at Air France. We wanted to bring the combined trip up to date, by modernizing it. »
If your TGV is late, you will be placed on the next flight
The formula has existed for 28 years but remains unknown to the general public. It is thus possible, with the twelve partners* SNCF, to book “Rennes – New York” or “Aix-en-Provence – Rio de Janeiro” journeys, for example, with a train journey between the city of departure and the Ile-de-France airports of Roissy Charles de Gaulle ( Val-d’Oise) and Orly (Val-de-Marne). “Each year, 300,000 customers use this service, which simplifies the approach route and allows door-to-door travel without increasing the number of tickets”, says SNCF Voyageurs.
Above all, it allows the airlines or the SNCF to adapt in the event of a delay. If your TGV does not arrive at the airport on time, you will be placed on the next flight, and vice versa. “If you take your train ticket separately, this will not be the case and we will have no way to take care of you, underlines Coralie Abalain. It is now up to us to communicate better to develop its use. »
The combined ticket will be extended to ten new cities
With the digitization of tickets, the SNCF hopes to reach 600,000 annual sales of “Train + Air” tickets within five years. To meet this objective, the number of cities accessible with the formula could increase. Today, only eighteen cities are concerned, including Lyon (Rhône), Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine), Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin), Lille (Nord) and Nantes (Loire-Atlantique). A dozen new agglomerations could be concerned.
*Air France, Air Austral, Air caraïbes, Corsair, Air Tahiti Nui, Air Transat, Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways, Royal Jordanian, Vietnam Airlines, French Bee.