Red Funnel to maintain Red Jet 7 days a week, with revised timetable.

Following the government’s recent lockdown restrictions, Red Funnel has today announced it is making changes to its Hi-Speed Red Jet timetable.

While the operator will maintain its daily Red Jet service between Southampton and West Cowes seven days a week, the service will move to a “commuter” timetable format effective this Monday, 16 November.  

The revised temporary timetable can be found here.

Now one week into the second lockdown, Red Funnel has seen a -60% decline in demand for its services compared to recent weeks, now bringing overall daily traffic passenger counts to just 15% of what they were this time last year.

The revised timetable has been established to serve the majority of Red Jet customers who continue to commute for essential reasons, with an estimated 70% of passengers already travelling at the same times as the revised schedule.

This new temporary timetable meets the needs of most regular passengers still travelling for essential reasons.

With demand significantly reduced, the Red Jets will also be able to carry up to five full size (non-folding) bicycles per crossing, on a first come first served basis.

To support Islanders crossing the Solent following the suspension of the FastCat service, Red Funnel also confirms that the company will accept all pre-booked Wightlink foot passenger tickets on both its routes between Southampton and East and West Cowes.

Fran Collins, CEO, Red Funnel added: “As for many businesses, this second lockdown has brought additional challenges and we are doing our absolute best to ensure we make the right short-term decisions, to safeguard our long-term ability to provide a lifeline service to the Island and its communities. We remain deeply committed to doing everything we can to keep sailing and maintain our services. We hope these changes won’t last long.

As we’ve done since the start of the pandemic, we’ve worked closely with the other operators and the Isle of Wight Council to ensure that the Island remains connected and supplied to, to the best of our efforts, and we look forward to resuming normal timetables as soon as we’re able.”

With effect from Friday, 13 November, Red Funnel will be suspending its food and retail services in Southampton’s Terminal 1 and closing the Signature Lounge on board its vehicle ferries until further notice. Take-away food and drink services will continue to be offered on-board the vehicle ferries.

Find all of the latest timetables at www.redfunnel.co.uk/timetables.

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For further information regarding Red Funnel, please contact:

Enya Lumley or Mel Piercy at McKenna Townsend

T: 01425 472330
E: [email protected]

Editor’s note

About Red Funnel

Red Funnel is the original Isle of Wight ferry company with roots tracing back to 1820. Based in the UK port of Southampton, Red Funnel carries 2.3m passengers and over 800,000 vehicles on its ferry route between the UK port of Southampton and East Cowes and 1.1m passengers between Southampton and West Cowes on its Red Jet Hi-Speed service.  In addition to ferry travel, Red Funnel is the only cross-Solent operator to offer ferry inclusive bonded holiday accommodation, attraction tickets, festival and event tickets and activity packages. Sub-brands include ‘Red Jet’ (the Hi-Speed passenger only ferry service serving West Cowes) and two food & beverage brands, ‘Steam Coffee Company’ and ‘ReFuel’.  The Company is a founder member of Visit Isle of Wight Ltd, the Island’s not for profit destination management organisation and Red Funnel sponsors or supports most of the Island’s premier events including the IW Festival, Cowes Week, Rhythm Tree, The Great Wonderfest, Wight Proms, Cowes Classics, and Walk the Wight as well as a range of community and niche interest events. Red Funnel’s Charities of the Year, 2020 are The Leaf Foundation (Monkey Haven) and Daisy Chains IW.

For more information visit: www.redfunnel.co.uk