Few French people know this trick to hope to travel in a full train.
SNCF trains are very often crowded during school holidays or weekends extended by public holidays. This is particularly the case this Easter weekend, which includes 3 days with Easter Monday as a public holiday but also for the next May bridges. For those who organize their trip at the last minute, finding a seat on a train, when everyone has already made plans, sometimes several months in advance, can turn into a real hassle. Trying as best you can, every 5 minutes, to refresh your search on SNCF Connect, in the hope of getting the ultimate place, is more depressing than anything else. What if we told you that there is an alert that does this work automatically for you?
This is a new feature of the SNCF Connect application which was released on November 30, 2023, a short time ago, and that is why few people know about it. Called “Full Train Alert”, it allows you to receive a notification on your phone when a seat becomes available on a crowded train.
To have access to this new feature, only available on the SNCF Connect mobile application, you must first have created an account or be already identified. You then need to launch your ticket search as usual, then simply click on the green insert "Be notified if a ticket is available" under the summary of the complete desired journey. Please note, this alert may not be displayed if the waiting list has exceeded 30 people registered for the same trip. This will actually depend on the chosen destination and the departure station. An alert on a Paris-Rennes, a very popular line, will very quickly be taken by storm, for example. First come, first served !
Once the alert has been created, SNCF Connect places the user on a waiting list. As soon as a place becomes available, and depending on the user's location, they will receive a notification. He will then have to seize the opportunity as quickly as possible, because "the purchasing slot which is then allocated has a limited duration", explains the railway company, "between 10 minutes and 2 hours" precisely. To find out their ranking on the waiting list, the user goes to the Account section under the “Ticket available alerts” tab. As there is no guarantee that a seat will become available, it is advisable to activate several alerts at the same time on different trains. This service, which could save more than one traveler, is currently only offered on non-connecting journeys and for a single person.
