New Year travel chaos looms as travellers face strikes and staff shortages

Tens of thousands of air and rail passengers are facing another day of travel disruption.

While engineering work continues on many key railway lines, dozens more trains have been cancelled or curtailed because of staff shortage.

TransPennine Express, which has failed to operate fully its new schedules since they were introduced on 15 December, has cancelled another 17 long-distance trains today, including many key services to and from Manchester airport.

The train operator links southern Scotland, Newcastle, York, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool.

Most cancellations are blamed on “a shortage of train crew”, though the early service from Glasgow to Manchester airport was cancelled north of Carlisle due to a broken-down train.

A spokesperson for TransPennine Express said: “As we bring in our new trains, it has had an associated impact upon our training schedule and our train maintenance plan which is having a big knock-on effect to our services.

“Our current performance is not acceptable and we are working hard to fix this.”

TransPennine passengers who are seeking to find alternative services will find at least 16 cancellations on Northern Rail, which has axed links including Blackpool to Liverpool, Nottingham to Leeds and Hull to Bridllngton.

Northern blames “a shortage of train drivers”. Signalling problems and broken-down trains have added to the problems on the network.

Transport for Wales is running a much-reduced service due to engineering work on the main South Wales rail line between the Severn Tunnel and Bridgend – cutting many services to and from Cardiff and Newport.

The peak-hour 5.31pm from Manchester to Cwmbran will go no further than Crewe. The return train will be cancelled completely.

Many other lines, including those serving Edinburgh from the west, are disrupted due to planned engineering works.

At London Waterloo, a strike by members of the RMT union in a dispute over the role of guards is entering its fifth week.

The terminus is normally the busiest station in Britain.

South Western Railway is operating about half the usual number of trains to destinations in southwest London, Surrey, Berkshire, Hampshire and Dorset, with no services at all on some lines.

The strike means that the usual late-night and early-morning services over the new year will not run.

Eurostar, which runs trains through the Channel Tunnel from London St Pancras to Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris, is continuing to cancel trains because of the French national strike in protest against proposed pension reforms.

It is cancelling four trains per day between London and Paris on most days up to Friday 3 January.

Passengers can be transferred to alternative trains free of charge or receive a full refund.

Fog in southeast England disrupted early flights, particularly at London City airport.

Arrivals from Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Milan and Vilnius were diverted to Southend, while an inbound flight from Zurich landed at Stansted.

Many other flights to and from the Docklands airport have been delayed or cancelled.

In Europe, around 150 flights on Eurowings – Lufthansa’s budget brand – have been cancelled as a result of a three-day strike that began at midnight on Sunday.

The grounded departures – about 50 per day between Monday and Wednesday – are mainly German domestic services. More than 20,000 passengers will be affected. They are being offered rail tickets for intra-German journeys.

The UFO cabin crew union airline said that the airline’s management had “given its employees no clear options for the future”.

The airline apologised to passengers, saying the strike call was “unfounded and incomprehensible to us”.