‘Digital Disruption’ Affects Air-Rail Market Share: North Star Issues Fifth Global Report

March 2017

North Star has released its 5th Annual Global Air-Rail Market Intelligence Report.

North Star’s Managing Director, Richard Brown explains that the report analyses global trends in air-rail services, and is based on a study of nine leading air-rail operators across Europe, Australia, Asia and South Africa. “The findings again clearly indicate that air-rail services continued to be a vital component of global aviation”, says Brown. “In fact, across our sample of nine operators, more than 44 million train passenger movements were experienced during 2016”.

However, the report concludes that the combined market share index for the nine operators show a slight decrease in people choosing rail when travelling to and from airports around the world.

More specifically, three operators within the study showed some market share growth, whilst six experienced a decrease.

North Star’s findings indicate that operators all face growing competition from new transport providers, such as Uber and similar car-sharing companies. “This has been the main driver for the slight decrease”, explains Brown, “and this disruption trend, let’s call it the ‘Uber-effect’, will only continue”. In response, the operators report an increasing need to enhance marketing and service delivery to address the challenge.

The findings also reveal that marketing spend varies greatly amongst the air-rail operators, with many continuing to focus their marketing on reliability, price and the perception of value.

Other outcomes of the study indicate that higher market share is experienced by air-rail operators who have the greatest price advantage over the standard taxi or car-sharing services. Trends also indicate that car-sharing services into capital city inner suburbs is on the increase.

“North Star has been pleased to conduct this fifth annual report”, concludes Richard Brown. “It provides an excellent snap-shot of the challenges and opportunities of the global air-rail industry. And like many industries, technological disruption is also raising its head in air-rail.”

Chris Basche, CEO, Brisbane Airtrain commented: “The report is extremely useful and serves as a guide for how air-rail operators are adopting to the challenges of a changing competitive market environment.”   

Richard Brown will present the study’s findings at the Global Air Rail Association’s conference in Brussels on the 13th & 14th November 2017.