Avanti West Coast cut its timetable in half as overtime goodwill ran dry

Through late 2022, passengers on Avanti West Coast and sister operator Transpennine Express endured mass cancellations and slashed timetables. On August 14, Avanti cut its London-Manchester service from seven trains per hour to a minimum of four and suspended ticket sales, blaming 'severe staff shortages.' The underlying cause, First Rail managing director Steve Montgomery told the BBC, was a pandemic backlog of driver training colliding with a schedule long propped up by rest-day and overtime working.

In summer 2022, drivers suddenly stopped volunteering for overtime. The Aslef union denied any unofficial strike but acknowledged a loss of goodwill — and argued the company should simply employ enough staff. Montgomery insisted Avanti had 'more than enough drivers' but needed time to catch up on training, which takes 12 to 18 months for a driver to qualify. Transpennine, which had no rest-day agreement, was cancelling more than 50 services the night before on a single Thursday.

The consequences landed: the Department for Transport warned Avanti it needed to 'drastically improve services' and extended its contract to run the London-Glasgow route by just six months, to April. First Rail apologised to customers and promised a December timetable that does not rely on rest-day working.

Timetable cut from seven trains per hour to four on London-Manchester, ticket sales suspended, and the West Coast contract extended by only six months.

The rail industry had relied on rest-day and overtime working to fulfil timetables for years — a structural dependency, not a buffer.

Pandemic sickness and a driver-training backlog left no slack, and new drivers take 12 to 18 months to qualify.

When volunteer goodwill dried up in summer 2022, there was no contracted staffing layer to fall back on.

A roster that only works when people volunteer for overtime is not a roster: build the timetable you can staff on contract hours.

Avanti promised a full December 2022 timetable that does not rely on rest-day working, while Transpennine remained without a rest-day agreement and kept making daily cancellations. The DfT's six-month extension left the West Coast contract under explicit improvement scrutiny until April.