Eurostar chaos: ‘You’re on your own,’ stranded passengers are told
The Man Who Pays His Way: Monopoly on London-Paris trains can’t end soon enough
Tfoso
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.
Over Christmas and the new year, airline passengers at Heathrow and Gatwick faced repeated mass cancellations due to bad weather. Distressing for travellers, but at least they had generous air passengers’ rights rules on their side. They were entitled to alternative transport as soon as possible at the airline’s expense, plus meals and hotels until they could make the journey.
Some Paris-bound passengers ended up on Eurostar, which earned a tidy sum taking people through the Channel Tunnel to the French capital.
This weekend, the tables were turned. In the early hours of Friday morning, a half-ton bomb was discovered beneath the tracks just north of Paris Gare du Nord. Trains in and out of the busiest station in Continental Europe, including Eurostar services, were suspended.
The timing could hardly have been worse. Friday is the busiest day for Eurostar. Besides the many business passengers going home to London or Paris at the end of the working week, thousands of leisure travellers are heading away for the weekend.
As bomb-disposal experts tackled the weapon, Eurostar initially axed three departures … then nine … then a dozen. No one was certain about when the lines might reopen. By 9am, the company decided to write off the entire day’s schedule of 32 trains, even though domestic services to and from Gare du Nord would resume later in the day.
“We took the decision to cancel all trains in and out of Paris to give our customers more certainty and enable them to make alternative plans,” a spokesperson told me.
I calculate the cancellations left 25,000 passengers out of position. I met some of them at London St Pancras International, the UK hub for Eurostar. Aidan Kelly, a police officer from Essex, was with three colleagues booked from London to Paris. They plan to run a charity half-marathon on Sunday in honour of a fallen fellow officer.
“We found out en route into London that there were issues,” he told me. “Then it looked like the trains were going to start running again. But that’s not happening now.”
The quartet tried to switch to a Eurostar train to Lille, which at least would have got them to the right side of the Channel. But station staff said they could not join the customer service queue to rebook because the line was too long.
“They’re just overrun,” Aidan told me. “They’re not coping well. Obviously the weight of numbers is just too much for them, so they’ve just closed customer services.”
Go online, passengers were urged – but both the Eurostar website and app collapsed under the strain of many thousands of travellers trying to rearrange their journeys.
“Nothing seems to work on the app so you don’t know what’s happening,” Aidan said. “It’s a bit of a disaster really.”
A Eurostar spokesperson later told me: “Due to the high volume of customers trying to manage their bookings, our website and app did experience some technical difficulties. Our teams worked quickly to get this resolved.”
The last time I saw the four officers, they were trying to arrange a vehicle so they could drive to Paris, using Eurotunnel from Folkestone to Calais. Other passengers took a train to Manchester – in diametrically the opposite direction to the French capital – in order to board an easyJet flight to Paris CDG, one of the few planes with seats available.
You’re on your own, was the message from Eurostar.
“Unfortunately, we do not organise taxis or alternative transport to Paris,” a spokesperson told me. “We recommend passengers check local travel options and make arrangements accordingly.”
One alternative plan for Eurostar could have been to run a service of sorts to and from Lille in northern France, or perhaps to Marne la Vallée – the station for Disneyland Paris, on a suburban rail link from the centre of the French capital. Eurostar has not answered my enquiry about this; I presume it was simply too difficult.
I also asked about Eurostar paying for hotels for people stranded at either end of the route. “We encourage customers to check with their travel insurance provider regarding hotel expenses,” the spokesperson said.
Eurostar suffered more than almost any other travel firm during the Covid pandemic. Often bizarre travel restrictions imposed by the British and French governments cost the firm hundreds of millions of pounds. But business has bounced back stronger than ever. The firm is extracting an average of £20 from each passenger in operating profit – yet seemingly giving a corporate shrug when things go off-track. “Come back another day, or ask for a refund.”
Pointing to travel insurers is one way to deflect the expense of caring for passengers. As monopoly provider of the UK’s only international rail service, Eurostar knows that passengers will keep coming.
When (not “if”, I hope) that market control is broken by the arrival of one or more competitors, travellers will be able to assess customer service when choosing who to book with. And even if the new rivals decide to adopt the Eurostar attitude of “you’re on your own”, at least we passengers should be paying less in the first place thanks to competition – which cannot arrive soon enough.
Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.
