On Jun 27, 2:38*am, CJB wrote:

On Jun 27, 2:11*am, Mizter T wrote:

On Jun 27, 1:34*am, John Ray
wrote:

[snip]

Here is the inevitable question - does "Oyster Card" include, for this
purpose, a Freedom Pass? *AS a matter of interest, the tfl website
advises that "If you are travelling between central London and Heathrow
Airport, for Terminals 1 2 3 and 5, please use Heathrow Express to/from
Paddington and for Terminal 4, please use Heathrow Connect to/from
Paddington or Ealing Broadway. These services will accept valid
Underground tickets covering all zones between 1 and 6." So another
question is, does a Freedom Pass equate to a "valid Underground ticket"?

I did think about the Freedom Pass just after I'd posted all that. My
unofficial and non-authoritative answer would be yes, a Freedom Pass
surely must count as such - it would be rather nonsensical if it
wasn't valid. If in doubt give it a bash - last time the HEx platforms
at both Paddington and Heathrow were crawling with the blue-jacketed
LU 'helpers' that are got in in to provide assistance to pax with the
special travel arrangements during engineering works (e.g. they pop up
all over the place when there are replacement buses running on other
lines), so one could ask them for confirmation it's ok first (perhaps
worth at least pretending you've got some reason for going to Heathrow
though!).

However I bet that hapless tourist pax arriving at LHR will still
purchase a full rip-off fare to Paddington simply 'cos they will be
directed to the HEX / Connect platforms, and also they wont be aware
of the cheaper Travelcard alternative from the Underground ticket
offices,

Ah, this is one of your favourite subjects is it not, CJB!

FWIW, LU 'helpers' will be present at all the HEx/HC Heathrow
stations, as well as outside the closed Piccadilly line station, and
will be able to advise pax of what ticket to buy.


Likewise at Paddington, pax for Heathrow wont necessarily be aware of
the cheaper tickets, and will purchase the expensive HEX tickets -
usually from a machine - 'cos no-one will actually stop them.

Again, there will be LU 'helpers' at Paddington. On a previous
occasion this happened I saw pax emerging from the Underground at
Paddington being given advice on where to go. There will also be
numerous LU 'helpers' on the HEx platform.


As for cross-company billing it always amazes me that BAA's Connect
especially doesn't seem to tally the no. of pax. travelling on its
services. I mean from Hayes & Harlington it is possible to catch FGW
or Connect to Paddington. Yet neither company seems to account for the
passegers using its services. Mind you before computerisation and e-
tickets airlines.used to cross-bill each other using only a 2%
sampling of tickets collected. I know - that used to be my project.
But what samples do Connect and FGW use?

Eh? The above is something of a non-sequiter to the topic of this
thread. But anyway, how do you know with such apparent certainty that
FGW and HC aren't monitoring passenger numbers on their services?