Flight cancellations and post-Brexit delays mar bank holiday homecoming

Motorists at Calais face waits of up to three hours due to increased border formalities

Homeward bound: Passengers at Barcelona airport (Simon Calder)

While Nasa makes preparations for a moonshot, the more mundane venture of returning home after a holiday is proving difficult for hundreds of thousands of travellers.

Britain’s biggest budget airline, easyJet, has made more than a dozen cancellations between Portugal, Spain and the UK due to industrial action, while motorists taking ferries from Calais have been warned to allow up to three hours to complete post-Brexit formalities.

At home, a range of problems are afflicting rail passengers, with congestion expected to build on the motorways and trunk roads.

Air

At least 900 flights to the UK were cancelled well ahead of the bank holiday weekend, mainly on British Airways and easyJet. The effect is to reduce the capacity available and increase fares.

The main short-term problems are flying from or to Lisbon and Palma on easyJet. A strike by ground staff at Portuguese airports means all six flights between Luton and Lisbon are grounded, along with four of the six Gatwick flights.

A Manchester-Lisbon round trip is also grounded, as well as Porto-Gatwick.

But Faro and Madeira flights are operating normally.

Industrial action by pilots working for easyJet in Spain has led to the cancellation of Palma-Gatwick round trips on Monday and Tuesday.

In total, around 3,000 passengers are affected by the easyJet cancellations.

When a flight is cancelled or heavily delayed, the airline must get the passenger to their destination as soon as possible and provide a hotel and meals until that happens.

Some passengers have experienced some long delays, with Ryanair passengers from several Spanish airports arriving three hours late at Manchester and Edinburgh overnight.

Saturday night’s British Airways flight 2262 from Montego Bay to London Gatwick had not one but two diversions to unexpected islands: first to St John’s in Newfoundland, Canada, because of a medical emergency, then to Dublin in Ireland because the crew were reaching the end of their permitted hours.

A replacement crew was flown to the Irish capital to take over the flight, which eventually arrived seven hours late.

On arrival, two of the UK’s biggest airports – Luton and Stansted – are expecting bank holiday Monday to be the busiest of the summer for arrivals. Birmingham and London Gatwick are predicting Friday 2 September to see peak passenger numbers, while London Heathrow is expecting larger numbers of arrivals all week.

Sea

The main problems are at Calais. Because of Brexit, Dover-bound motorists must now clear French border formalities rather than simply UK Border Force controls. As a result of the British request to become “third-country nationals” after the 2016 referendum, French Police aux Frontières are obliged to check and stamp every passport.

Irish Ferries is warning travellers: “Due to expected queues, please allow up to three hours to complete check-in and border controls.

“If delayed at border controls, we will accommodate you on the next available sailing.”

Its rival, DFDS, warns: “No queues at check-in, queues of up to 90 minutes at border controls.”

The delays mirror problems at the start of the main summer holidays, with drivers and passengers facing many hours of delays at Dover and Folkestone.

Sailings from other Continental European and Irish ports are operating smoothly.

Rail

The worst problems are on the West Coast main line. Avanti West Coast, which runs trains on the route from London Euston to the West Midlands, northwest England and southern Scotland, is already operating a much-reduced timetable.

The train operator blames “the current industrial relations climate which has resulted in severe staff shortages in some grades through increased sickness levels, as well as the majority of drivers making themselves unavailable for overtime in a coordinated fashion, and at short notice”.

Dozens of trains on both Avanti West Coast and London Northwestern have been delayed or cancelled following an incident between Watford Junction and Milton Keynes.

All tracks were closed for several hours on Monday morning. Some have now reopened, but cancellations and delays are continuing.

Affected passengers can switch to other operators including Chiltern, East Midlands Railway, Transpennine Express and LNER.

But LNER is facing its own problems, with a fault with the seat reservation system leading to reservations not loading on Azuma services.

“Customers are advised to sit in their booked seats stated on their tickets for their specific service.”

Pre-planned rail engineering work means that two London termini – Charing Cross and Fenchurch Street – are completely closed. No trains are running between Stoke-on-Trent and Stockport, south of Manchester.

Road

The AA has issued an “amber warning” for travel from lunchtime onwards, with routes from Cornwall and Devon to Bristol and London expected to be heavily congested.

The M25 around London – particularly between the M23 and M40 junctions, taking in the M3, M4 and Heathrow airport – is also predicted to be slow moving. The M60 around Manchester and the M6 links to and from the Lake District are also affected.