Christmas Eve travel chaos: Train strike, Omicron and flight cancellations affect Brits’ festive plans

Pre-Christmas journeys at home and abroad are expected to surge on 24 December – but travellers face disruption caused by a combination of Omicron and industrial action.

CrossCountry, which runs trains from Scotland and northern England via the Midlands to South Wales and southern England is cancelling dozens of trains because of a strike by members of the RMT union.

A skeleton service between Edinburgh and Plymouth will run only twice in either direction. Between Manchester and Reading, trains will run every two hours – with one service extended to Bournemouth.

Direct trains between Nottingham and Cardiff are suspended, requiring passengers to change at least twice to make the journey.

All trains between Leicester and Peterborough are cancelled, cutting off Rutland from the national rail network – though an hourly bus service will call at the county town, Oakham.

The CrossCountry dispute is about the role of guards. Another stoppage is planned for New Year’s Eve.

Hundreds of other trains are cancelled across Great Britain because so many rail staff are isolating because of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

Avanti West Coast is warning of “short notice service changes and service disruption” on its network from London Euston to the West Midlands, northwest England and southern Scotland.

London Northwestern Railway has cut all trains on the branch lines between Watford and St Alban’s, and between Bletchley and Bedford, so crew can be deployed on main line services.

On the East Coast main line, LNER has cut a dozen trains between Leeds and London King’s Cross, as well as four between Lincoln and London.

Great Western Railway has put in “planned cancellations designed to minimise the impact on as many customers as possible”. These include several trains from Cardiff to Penzance and on the branch line to Newquay in Cornwall.

Transport for Wales has deployed “an emergency timetable” intended to “prepare for an expected rise in staff shortages due to the emergence of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 and to ensure the company can continue to provide a reliable service throughout this latest stage of the pandemic”.

Thameslink and its sister companies Great Northern and Gatwick Express are making substantial cancellations.

Rail services across the United Kingdom will wind down from early evening, with no trains on 25 December and few running on Boxing Day.

National Express and Megabus will be running dozens of services on Christmas Day and 26 December, while Scottish Citylink has a shuttle between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

On 25 December, the only domestic flights are morning departures on British Airways between London Heathrow and both Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The UK’s main airports appear to be operating fairly smoothly on Christmas Eve– with significantly fewer passengers than expected due to the bans imposed on British travellers last weekend by both France and Germany.

At Gatwick, easyJet’s flights to Berlin, Munich, Bordeaux, Nice and Paris have been cancelled.

Transatlantic travellers with connections in the US face possible problems with Delta (the airline, not the variant) and United cancelling more than 200 flights between them due to Omicron-related staff shortage.

Austria brings in tough new rules for British visitors from Christmas Day. Quarantine-free entry will be permitted only for arrivals from the UK if they can provide proof of a booster on top of full vaccination and a PCR test taken within 48 hours of arrival.

On the roads, the RAC is calling 24 December “Frantic Festive Friday” and warning of the busiest Christmas for five years on the roads, with 5.3 million leisure journeys.

The worst problems are predicted for a 10-mile stretch of the A303 through Wiltshire between Amesbury and the A36 junction.