>> But airline is not same as train.
>>
>> Many cases people are forced to use trains e.g. commuting to London. Here people have
>> no choice. All such commuting routes are monopoly by train operating companies.
About half of rail fares are directly regulated, including all season tickets, for precisely that reason.
You can't run competing trains on the same track very easily or efficiently.
Many markets will deliver better results for users over time if they are regulated to a degree anyway. Bus deregulation has been tried with disastrous (but hilarious) results. There was a time when you could hardly move for buses in Sheffield, racing each other to the next stop sometimes, and many spewing out thick smoke because the operators in cut-throat competition couldn't afford decent ones.
Standard fares have risen ahead of inflation, by design, for most of the last 15 years or so. The government engineered fares to rise ahead of RPI to bear down on the costs paid by the taxpayer. At the same time, customers (passengers) have got better at shopping around and many off-peak and especially advance booking fares have actually fallen, even as revenues and passengers numbers have increased (I think).
The train companies can't teach the airlines much about revenue maximisation. Both are essentially fixed cost businesses, trains more so because fuel costs are lower, so it is about collecting the maximum amount of income for the services operated. If that means apparently irrational fare comparisons, then that's what they will do, as FF will know very well.
The extra £30 must end up with the TOCs, who knows how they share it out.
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