Flight cancellations and post-Brexit delays mar bank holiday homecoming

While Nasa makes preparations for a moonshot, the more mundane venture of returning home after a holiday is proving difficult for hundreds of thousands of travellers.

Britain’s biggest budget airline, easyJet, has made more than a dozen cancellations between Portugal, Spain and the UK due to industrial action, while motorists taking ferries from Calais have been warned to allow up to three hours to complete post-Brexit formalities.

At home, a range of problems are afflicting rail passengers, with congestion expected to build on the motorways and trunk roads.

Air

At least 900 flights to the UK were cancelled well ahead of the bank holiday weekend, mainly on British Airways and easyJet. The effect is to reduce the capacity available and increase fares.

The main short-term problems are flying from or to Lisbon and Palma on easyJet. A strike by ground staff at Portuguese airports means all six flights between Luton and Lisbon are grounded, along with four of the six Gatwick flights.

A Manchester-Lisbon round trip is also grounded, as well as Porto-Gatwick.

But Faro and Madeira flights are operating normally.

Industrial action by pilots working for easyJet in Spain has led to the cancellation of Palma-Gatwick round trips on Monday and Tuesday.

In total, around 3,000 passengers are affected by the easyJet cancellations.

When a flight is cancelled or heavily delayed, the airline must get the passenger to their destination as soon as possible and provide a hotel and meals until that happens.

Some passengers have experienced some long delays, with Ryanair passengers from several Spanish airports arriving three hours late at Manchester and Edinburgh overnight.

Saturday night’s British Airways flight 2262 from Montego Bay to London Gatwick had not one but two diversions to unexpected islands: first to St John’s in Newfoundland, Canada, because of a medical emergency, then to Dublin in Ireland because the crew were reaching the end of their permitted hours.

A replacement crew was flown to the Irish capital to take over the flight, which eventually arrived seven hours late.

On arrival, two of the UK’s biggest airports – Luton and Stansted – are expecting bank holiday Monday to be the busiest of the summer for arrivals. Birmingham and London Gatwick are predicting Friday 2 September to see peak passenger numbers, while London Heathrow is expecting larger numbers of arrivals all week.

Sea

The main problems are at Calais. Because of Brexit, Dover-bound motorists must now…