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
Assessing figures from both the AA and the RAC, Monday 22 December is expected to see the worst delays on UK roads before Christmas, with commuter, business and getaway traffic combining. The RAC says the worst time to travel is between 10am and 5pm.
Key locations for congestion are:
- M25, particularly between the M4 at Heathrow and the M1, plus near Bluewater in Kent
- M4 from M5 junction near Bristol to Cardiff
- M5 south of Bristol and also close to the M6 junction in the West Midlands
- M6 through the West Midlands from the M42 junction to Wolverhampton
- M60 around Manchester, near the Trafford Centre and between junction 7 (Altrincham) and the M62 junction
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.
The optimum time to travel on both Tuesday and Wednesday will be before 11am, the RAC says.
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
Hundreds of British Airways passengers from Singapore and Sydney have had their flight cancelled on Monday due to a technical issue on the outbound flight late on Saturday evening.
The Boeing 777 operating BA15 taxied to depart but returned to the gate due to a technical issue, believed to involve radio navigation equipment. Repair attempts failed and eventually passengers were offloaded and taken to hotels.
Under air passengers’ rights rules, BA travellers whose flights are cancelled are entitled to be flown to their destination as soon as possible on any airline, and to be provided with meals and hotels until they get there.
Bad weather at Manchester airport on Sunday night caused many delays of an hour or more, with the easyJet evening flight to and from Berlin cancelled due to the curfew at the German capital’s airport.
On Monday 22 December, most flights are running smoothly. The most significant delays are inbound from eastern North America, particularly from New York and Montreal.
London Heathrow, Birmingham and Manchester airports are among those expecting their busiest Christmas to date. The Independent approached all the major airports for their busiest days.
Some specific peaks are:
- Bristol: 28 December, with high pressure for arrivals on 2 and 4 January.
- Edinburgh: Before Christmas, 22 December will be busiest; peak day overall is 29 December, with 28 December and 2 January also busy.
- Luton: 28 December
- Manchester: 28 December
- Southampton: 22 December
The top destinations from many airports will be:
- Alicante
- Amsterdam
- Dubai
- Dublin
- Geneva
- Tenerife
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 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
Monday 22 December will be the busiest day on the railways before Christmas. While individual lines are likely to vary – especially after Christmas when widespread Network Rail engineering work kicks in – passengers are more or less guaranteed an uncrowded trip on 24 and 31 December as well as New Year’s Day.
Trainline data indicates the three busiest routes are all to and from London Euston, serving Birmingham New Street, Manchester Piccadilly and Milton Keynes Central.
Currently the worst rail disruption is in Cornwall. The line between Par and Newquay is closed by flooding, with taxis replacing trains. Disruption is expected until the afternoon. The branch from Liskeard to Looe is also flooded, with minibuses replacing trains. And a power failure has hit the signalling system between Penzance and St Erth.
On CrossCountry Trains, which serves England, Wales and Scotland through its hub at Birmingham New Street, many trains have been cancelled or curtailed “due to constraints on train crew availability”. It will particularly affect links from Nottingham to Cardiff. Cancellations and curtailments on CrossCountry Trains are likely to continue over the coming days.
The optimum day to travel before Christmas in order to avoid crowding is Wednesday 24 December. Be warned, though, that services wind down early: the last London-Edinburgh train leaves at 4.30pm on Christmas Eve, while the final Newcastle–Birmingham departure is at 5.40pm.
No trains run in the UK on Christmas Day, and very few on Boxing Day.
After Christmas, there will be a surge on Saturday 27 December when intercity services are restored. Some key lines will close, putting pressure on other routes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As normal, almost all local bus services will close across the country on 25 December, apart from a few hospital services and the Isle of Wight, where the local company Southern Vectis says: “We are running a special Christmas Timetable on routes 1, 3, 5, 7 & 9”
Ferry
At the Port of Dover, on Monday morning there is a 30-minute wait at the French border controls.
The port 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 on the next available sailing free of charge.
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, ferries are running normally on Monday. 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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