In 2014, KORAIL began to offer KTX high-speed train connections from Incheon International Airport to Seoul, Daegu, Busan and other cities in Korea. The Incheon Airport KTX service was suspended now at the end of March 2018. The main reason was that the demand was too low and ridership stayed far below necessary numbers.
Incheon Airport KTX Service from 2014
The KTX service started in June 2014 and trains left directly from Incheon International Airport to all lines on the high-speed rail network. There were 11 trains per day going to Busan, Masan, Pohang, Donghae, Mokpo and Yeosu. For example, the trains to Busan left once every three hours and the total travel time was around 3.5 hours.
Of course, the KTX service wasn’t just in a single direction. People were able to use the KTX service to reach the airport conveniently. But this changed now and the service is suspended without any plans to reopen it again. KORAIL will examine future plans together with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) in August of this year.
Reasons for Suspension
The KTX service wasn’t very popular and the ridership was very low. KORAIL kept the service alive for visitors of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics 2018. However, the MOLIT said that the demand was around 15% on a normal weekday. The announcement of suspending the service was made on March 21, just 10 days in advance and it left many people to change their plans and look for alternative travel options.
Alternative Solutions
We receive many inquires about train connections from the airport to major cities in Korea. It was a very comfortable and good service for people arriving at the airport that need to travel to other cities than Seoul. They were directly able to get on a KTX and reach their destination conveniently.
Now, travelers will have to choose alternatives. The following two options are possible: (1) taking the AREX to Seoul Station and then a KTX to their final destination in Korea; or (2) take an inter-city express bus from the Incheon Airport bus terminal to their destination.
(1) Taking the train: Travelers, who want to use the train, will have to take the AREX to Seoul Station and then transfer to a KTX (or another train). In some cases visitors have to visit Yongsan Station to board a train to their destination. Please use the KORAIL website to check schedules and to reserve tickets.
(2) Taking the bus: Inter-city express buses leave from Incheon International Airport Terminal 1 and 2 to several major Korean cities. Information on the buses and time schedules can be found here (only in Korean).
For more information, please see our follow up post.
If it were possible to make a reservation on any Korail train from outside Korea, I’d find the Incheon KTX more useful, but as it is, you can only buy tickets/make reservations once you’ve landed in Korea – so I take the AREX to Seoul station, and head down to my base in Daegu from there. I would guess that’s part of their capacity problem. Korail tends to be a bit provincial.
@Dan Strickland
“If it were possible to make a reservation on any Korail train from outside Korea, I’d find the Incheon KTX more useful, but as it is, you can only buy tickets/make reservations once you’ve landed in Korea…”
What, doesn’t Korail’s English website (http://www.letskorail.com/ebizbf/EbizBfTicketSearch.do) work anymore? I bought dozens of KTX and other tickets through this.
The problem is there were only 11 a day and they mostly weren’t at convenient times. If KORAIL had just replaced one AREX train per hour with a KTX through service stopping at Seoul station and then direct to Gimpo and Incheon, instead of running the KTX as competition, they wouldn’t have a problem with demand, people from outside Seoul wouldn’t’ my need to change platforms/trains at Seoul Station, and it wouldn’t cost them much more. They use the same tracks anyhow for the most part.
Two thoughts:
-with this withdrawal, plugging large airports into the national long-distance rail network meaningfully (ie. several long distance trains per hour) is, sadly, once again a purely European way of linking up transport (Amsterdam, Zurich, Frankfurt, Paris-CDG), until all those new Airport Ground Transport Centers springing up in Mainland China are actually linked up to the HSR network. Korea could have led the way…
-while Narita Airport is universally considered to be too remote from the city it is meant to serve – witness all the airlines beating a path to Haneda’s door since it opened up to intercontinental air travel – it is actually closer than Incheon is to Seoul, when comparing the Keisei Skyliner express rail link (45 minutes to Ueno) to “A’rex express” (51 minutes fron T2 to Seoul Stn.)! Given that Gimpo isn’t going down Haneda’s path, are there any plans to actually decrease travel times to Hong Kong or SIngapore levels (20 mins. by train or car) ?
Hey airport addict!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I’m not sure if I completely understand your question. You wonder if there are any plans to make the A’REX travel faster between Incheon Airport and Seoul? I’m not aware of any plans and I don’t think that it’s possible. The A’REX express train (or A’REX non-stop train) needs 43 minutes in total. So that’s already relatively quick!
Cheers,
Nikola
Hello Nikola,
sorry for being unclear; yes, my question was whether A’REX could be made quicker but also more generally if rail infrastrucure from Incheon Airport could be diversified to bypass Seoul altogether and plug into KTX tracks somewhere southeast of Incheon to connect much more of Korea to its gateway to the world.
Well, if nothing’s planned I guess the powers that be are happy to let buses shoulder the main burden of landside transportation. It’s just that, as I shared in my earlier post, from my blinkered European view is seems so wrong to cancel trains in favor of buses :-( !