When someone books a trip in Europe, it almost happens by reflex: they search for flights first, then possibly turn to the train as a fallback. It’s a habit born from the idea that flying always saves time. Yet the analysis by Omio on 25 European routes, conducted across 1,000 suppliers, tells a different story: on many of the busiest routes, the train arrives first. Not by a hair, but with margins that in some cases exceed two hours.
The comparison isn’t between flight time and train travel time, but between the two door-to-door itineraries: transfers to the airport, lines at security, boarding, baggage waiting, transfers in the city upon arrival. When you add up all those steps, they can easily amount to more than an hour (sometimes even more).
The routes where the train beats the airplane
On the Brussels–Paris leg, the train saves 140 minutes compared with the plane, with a ticket that costs on average six times less (34 euros versus 209). Between Frankfurt and Cologne, the advantage rises to 132 minutes, with a total travel time of just 63 minutes. Even in Italy the gap is pronounced: on the Milan–Florence route the train gains 100 minutes, Rome–Florence nearly 97.
It isn’t an isolated case or a peculiarity of only a few routes: the top ten list also includes Madrid–Valencia, Madrid–Barcelona, Paris–Lyon and London–Brussels, where the difference remains between 80 and 110 minutes in favor of rail.
More and more travelers seem to have noticed this: rail bookings in Europe rose by 32% in the last year, more than triple the growth of flights. It’s worth noting, however, that not all routes reward the wallet: on London–Paris and London–Brussels the train is faster but more expensive than the low-cost flight.
Here is the top 10 of the routes:
- Brussels–Paris: -140 minutes;
- Frankfurt–Cologne: -132 minutes;
- Madrid–Valencia: -110 minutes;
- Milan–Florence: -100 minutes;
- London–Paris: -99 minutes;
- Rome–Florence: -97 minutes;
- Madrid–Barcelona: -87 minutes;
- Paris–Lyon: -86 minutes;
- London–Brussels: -83 minutes;
- Madrid–Seville: -80 minutes.
The train’s advantages that minutes don’t measure
Choosing to travel by train isn’t solely a matter of time in minutes, but also of the quality of how we decide to spend that time. One hundred fifty minutes on a high-speed train, seated, with the option to work, read, or simply watch the landscape pass by, isn’t equivalent to one hundred fifty minutes split between shuttles, barcode checks, and waiting rooms—especially in a moment when slow travel is becoming the priority for more and more people.
There’s also the variable of the arrival point. A train almost always arrives at a central station, often reachable on foot from tourist hubs. A flight, no matter how quick, drops passengers at the outskirts of most cities, leaving them with the final leg of travel by bus, shuttle, or metro.
The most interesting finding from the analysis isn’t merely that “the train beats the airplane,” but that for years we’ve been comparing the two options using the wrong metric: focusing only on flight time and ignoring the rest of the journey.
