Heathrow Express is backing the Train Driver of the Year award at the RailStaff Awards 2014.
The popular category is the first that comes to mind when people talk of the RailStaff Awards. Top performing Heathrow Express is best positioned to make this award.
Heathrow Express was launched in 1998 and carries an average of 17,000 passengers a day. It enjoyed the distinction of being the first train company in Britain to employ a majority of women drivers. Early services were crewed by French and German Eurostar drivers on secondment. Other drivers joined from Gatwick Express and many were recruited fresh into the rail industry. Other firsts include launching e-ticketing direct to customer mobile phones. Also from the start passengers could watch live TV on board the train.
Heathrow Express offers the fastest way of reaching the airport taking just 15 minutes to complete the journey between London Paddington and Heathrow terminals 1, 2 and 3 – and a few minutes more to reach terminals 4 and 5.
Says Andy Milne, editor of RailStaff, ‘Heathrow Express has come to exemplify all that is dynamic and uplifting about the new rail industry. Performance ratings of 98% put it at the top of the game. Friendly staff, often multi-lingual and always helpful, make it the clear choice of people travelling to and from Heathrow.’ Andy Milne worked for Heathrow Express at its launch. ‘Rod Hoare, the first chief executive tells a story of being down on the platforms at Paddington one morning. A train pulled in and a group of tourists from overseas were puzzling over a map. The driver left his cab and seeing them walked over.
Not only did the driver advise them but walked them over to the soon to depart service and saw them safely aboard. Good news stories from Heathrow Express have provided some of the most dramatic and heartfelt we have ever run in RailStaff. How appropriate that Heathrow Express is backing this year’s Train Driver of the Year Award.’
Heathrow Express is a non- franchised, non-subsidised, private company which owns its own trains, the stations at Heathrow, and the below-ground section of the line between the Great Western Main Line at Airport Junction and the airport itself. Heathrow Express is owned by Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited, formerly BAA.
