The rail, road, flight and ferry travel chaos you need to know about this Christmas
Worst rail disruption is on CrossCountry Trains through Birmingham, while easyJet passengers from Tenerife are scrambling to return to Manchester after flight cancellation
AbJimroe
All the signs are that the festive getaway in, around and away from the UK will be the busiest of the decade, setting new records across transport pressure points.
What will it mean for your journey? The Independent has consulted dozens of organisations to curate this Christmas travel special.
Road
The RAC says: “The single busiest day for getaways over the period is Christmas Eve, when volumes of traffic could be at their highest since Covid.” Around 4.2 million getaway journeys are expected, but regular travel will be much lighter.
Key locations for congestion are:
In addition, the M27 in Hampshire will close between junctions 9 and 11 from 8pm on 24 December until 4am on 4 January.
Christmas Day will be the optimum driving day across the UK.
Air
EasyJet passengers from Tenerife due to fly to Manchester on Tuesday evening found their flight cancelled due to a technical issue. Most of the passenger will be rebooked on flights that arrive at either Manchester or Liverpool at around 11pm on Christmas Eve.
A Qatar Airways passenger, Karl Touzalin, arrived back in Manchester airport from Sydney two days late after a flight cancellation and extended delay. He told The Independent: “I was supposed to be back two days ago, but on my way to Sydney airport it was I received a text say the flight has been cancelled, with the airline saying ‘We’ve now changed your flight to the next day’.”
The replacement flight departed 18 hours late, according to Flightradar24 data. The Independent has asked Qatar Airways for a response. Under air passengers’ rights rules, the airline has no responsibility for providing accommodation or paying compensation.
At London Heathrow, passengers on Delta flight DL3 from New York JFK will arrive six hours late, with a knock-on delay for the return transatlantic flight.
During the 17 days of the festive spell from 19 December to 4 January, aviation analysts at Cirium report 42,046 flights are scheduled to depart from UK airports with a total of 7.8 million seats. That is an average of more than 100 take-offs per hour, with almost 20,000 seats.
Departures are up 2 per cent compared with the festive period in 2024, and available departing seats up 4 per cent year on year.
London Heathrow has the highest number of flights, with one in five departures being from the UK’s busiest hub. It is expecting its busiest Christmas to date, as are Birmingham and Manchester.
On Christmas Day, 889 flights are scheduled to depart UK airports, according to Cirium. This figure is up 10 per cent on 2024 and one-third higher than the pre-pandemic peak in 2019.
Some specific peaks identified by The Independent are:
The top destinations from many airports will be:
Passengers are warned about inadvertently breaching aviation security rules with items such as Christmas crackers and snow globes.
UK passport holders have been reporting long waits at some Schengen area frontiers across Europe. On Sunday morning, Michel Roux posted on X (formerly Twitter): “Current queue at Lyon passport control 120 mins, kids crying, tempers boiling over, bloody Brex****.”
Rail
The last couple of days before Christmas are proving chaotic. Tens of thousands of passengers on the East Coast Main Line endured delays of two hours or more on Tuesday 23 December. The line, which connects London King's Cross with Yorkshire, northeast England and Scotland, was blocked between York and Newcastle because of a signalling problem.
LNER says “tickets dated Tuesday 23 are valid for travel today, Wednesday 24 December”. But the train operator warns: “LNER is running a reduced service today, and many trains will be busy.”
On Christmas Eve morning, the main problem is on the West Coast Main Line between London Euston and Birmingham New Street due to a signalling fault at Rugby. At least six intercity trains on Avanti West Coast have been cancelled, with disruption expected until 11am. Avanti tickets are being accepted on Chiltern trains between London Marylebone and Birmingham Moor Street.
There are continuing problems on CrossCountry services. The network connects England, Wales and Scotland through the hub at Birmingham New Street. Dozens of trains have cancelled or curtailed “due to constraints on train crew availability”. Some services that are running have only half of the carriages open to passengers.
A spokesperson for the train operator said: “CrossCountry colleagues are working hard to keep people moving this Christmas Eve – though as normal, services will finish earlier than usual.
“We have worked hard to keep cancellations to a minimum and apologise for any late-notice cancellations that have occurred today. Where final services of the day have been impacted, rail replacement bus services will be in operation to ensure passengers reach their intended destination.
“It’s been an exceptionally busy few days in the lead up to Christmas with many people, as usual, travelling home in the days just before Christmas Eve. Any passengers affected by journey changes today should speak to station staff, who will do everything they can to help them reach their destination.”
Services wind down early across the UK on Christmas Eve. Final trains are as follows (London departures are listed clockwise).
London to:
Other links:
The latest last train is from Stansted airport to London Liverpool Street, which leaves at two minutes to midnight.
The only trains in the UK on Christmas Day are between the terminals at London Heathrow airport. Very few trains will run anywhere in Britain on Boxing Day.
After Christmas, there will be a surge on Saturday 27 December when intercity services are restored. But widespread Network Rail engineering work kicks in. Some key lines will close, putting pressure on other routes.
One of the UK’s busiest stations, London Waterloo, will be closed from the end of services on Christmas Eve to Sunday 28 December inclusive.
The West Coast Main Line, which connects London Euston with the West Midlands, northwest England, north Wales and southern Scotland, will be closed on the key stretch from Milton Keynes to Rugby and will remain closed up to and including 5 January for the replacement of a junction at Hanslope in Buckinghamshire.
Further north, the West Coast Main Line between Preston and Carlisle will close from New Year’s Eve to 15 January inclusive, and a shuttle service will connect the two cities via the scenic Settle and Carlisle Railway.
Elsewhere on the railways, New Year’s Eve will be quiet, with New Year’s Day hosting fewer travellers still – though in Scotland almost no trains will run on 1 January.
Crowds will build back on Friday 2 January, with the final weekend of the festive season on Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 January involving large numbers of travellers, many of them displaced to other lines by Network Rail engineering work.
No trains will run on the main line between Leeds and York until the start of services on 3 January.
Bus and coach
Both Flixbus and National Express are laying on extra trips on key dates and routes, aiming especially to help passengers affected by rail engineering closures. The coach firms will be running hundreds of services on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, when few trains run.
Most local bus services will close across the country on 25 December. The long-standing champion of bus travel on Christmas Day is the Isle of Wight. Local company Southern Vectis says 25 December will see “a special Christmas Timetable on routes 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9”.
Local buses will run in Edinburgh and Brighton; the latter has a Christmas Day link to Lewes for the first time. The Confederation of Passenger Transport says there will be more services in the Thames Valley and in the Crawley area, with more local buses than on any 25 December in the past decade.
Ferry
The Port of Dover is urging drivers not to arrive more than two hours before their scheduled departure. Unlike aviation, there is no penalty for missing a ferry at Dover due to congestion; you will simply be rebooked free of charge. “If you missed your ferry, please don’t worry,” the port is telling motorists. “You’ll be put on the next available sailing.”
The final departure from Dover before Christmas on 24 December is at 3.05pm on P&O Ferries to Calais. The last arrival from the French port is at 3.45pm. The port will then be closed until the first sailing on Boxing Day at 9.10am, aboard DFDS to Calais.
On the Caledonian MacBrayne network in western Scotland, four sailings between Oban and the isle of Mull have been cancelled on Christmas Eve “due to a technical issue”. No CalMac vessels will operate on Christmas Day or New Year’s Day.
This article is kept updated with the latest information
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