Go greener, go for free with Virgin!

Virgin Trains is again going head to head with airlines in a drive to get people off domestic flights and onto more environmentally friendly trains by offering 12,500 flyers free train tickets to sample environmentally-friendly train travel and reduce their carbon footprint.

The Plane Relief Plus campaign allows flights taken during April and May to qualify for the offer making it ideal for travellers planning to take a trip for one or both of the forthcoming May bank holiday weekends.

Air travellers can log onto the dedicated website Planerelief.com for details on how they can swap their used airline boarding card from flights between London and Manchester, Liverpool or Glasgow for a free First Class return train journey anywhere on the Virgin trains West Coast network. Passengers will receive a code in return for their boarding pass, which enables them to book their rail journey free on the website. The free First Class train tickets are available for use until October.

The facts are that Pendolino trains emit at least 76 percent less CO2 than cars and 78 percent less than domestic flights. Also they return 17 percent of electricity used back to the National Grid every time they brake - enough to provide power for 11,825 homes for a year or to brew 2.6 billion cups of tea. Virgin Trains is also carrying out a biofuel test using one of its engines with a view to running its CrossCountry Voyager fleet on biofuel.

The campaign forms part of a company-wide environmental drive in addressing the effect our transport choices make on the environment. The aim is to encourage passengers to take the train instead of the plane when travelling in the UK, and to be aware of the negative effects of domestic air travel on the environment.

Virgin Trains is currently running a ‘Go Greener. Go Cheaper’ marketing campaign, part of a consistent push to take on domestic airlines on speed, price, frequency and environmental credentials. This follows on from the first Plane Relief campaign in March 2006, which allowed flyers from London to Manchester to swap their used boarding cards for a free Virgin Trains First Class ticket. Almost 2,500 flyers took the green option and cashed in their boarding cards.