Originally Posted by
BAAZ
No. It isn't 5 hours door to door, it's 5 hours St Pancras to Frankfurt Hbf.
But for people like
James S, that's only an extra 5 minutes from his house. Still, if I were going by taxi I'd leave 15 minutes even from his end of Covent Garden. I guess James must have a new broomstick.
Experience elsewhere in Europe suggests that high-speed trains start to compete effectively with air travel around the 3-hour-train-journey mark. Much less than that and the train is the clear winner; much more than that and most people prefer the plane.
I think it depends on a lot of other factors. One is the reliability of the train. Another is whether you're taking checked baggage, particularly if you destination airport is one of those where you typically have to wait an hour for your bags (and I'm not thinking of LHR here).