Holidaymakers faced more summer travel misery on Monday as Eurostar cancelled trains — and travellers were warned that the chaotic scenes at Dover could be repeated at the weekend.
Thousands of travellers were crammed into overflowing departure lounges on both sides of the Channel this morning after two early morning Eurostar services between London and Paris were cancelled. It follows trains being axed on Sunday because of the temporary closure of the high-speed line in France.
Meanwhile, Toby Howe, from the Kent Resilience Forum, which oversees the response to delays at Channel crossings, said that the authorities faced another “red” situation this coming weekend after declaring a critical incident on Friday.
“It’s the second busiest getaway weekend of the summer holidays,” he told BBC Radio 4.
“As we’ve just found out the weekend just gone, traffic numbers travelling across the Channel were back to pre-pandemic levels and with the increased checks it is slower to get through.”
On what the rest of the summer could bring, he added: “Basically it’s a very vulnerable situation, it takes very little to cause further issues.”
Some Eurostar travellers were on Monday told it could be days before they were rebooked onto another service.
Friends Marc Bull, Tom Holme, James Speak and Rohan Gokhale were stranded in the French capital overnight when their train was cancelled.
They had arrived in Dieppe by ferry on Friday for a cycling weekend.
“We were all due on a train on Sunday, but it’s been cancelled, and we all have to stay here,” said Mr Gokhale, 29.
“I was due back at work in the City this morning, but there’s not even a guarantee of a train during the day.”
French border officials are in dispute with the Channel Tunnel train operator over plans to increase the number of trains between the two capitals to 17 a day.
Border police and security personnel in France claim that they are suffering from chronic staffing shortages and cannot handle the extra passengers, according to French government sources.
A Eurostar spokesman told the Standard that more than 1,000 extra seats were released today to help those affected by the disruption to travel.
However, they added that “services are extremely busy” and the new seat allocations would only cover just over one full train of passengers.
“The last thing we want to do is delay or cancel services, and in fact we have deliberately been cautious with the ramping-up of our timetable to avoid this,” they said.
“We are very sorry to those affected.” It comes as long queues were forming at the Port of Dover again this morning amid fears that the severe disruption seen in recent days could return.
Passengers were warned of building delays, caused by a shortage of French border control officials who check travel documents in Britain before allowing passengers to board ferries.
A spokesman for P&O Ferries said: “The queues have picked up and it is taking approximately one hour to clear passport control.”
Ferry operator DFDS told passengers to “allow a minimum of 120 minutes before your departure to complete all controls”.
Passengers at Heathrow also reported long queues to get through security this morning as staff shortages at the airport continue to cause chaos.
Heathrow has announced a 100,000 daily cap on passengers until September 11, infuriating airlines.
Ryanair chief financial officer Neil Sorahan criticised airports for not recruiting enough staff to cater for the rebound in travellers, saying "various governments" and airports needed to be held to account for "not staffing up appropriately".
"They had the schedules months in advance," he told the BBC.
It comes as commuters were facing further disruption this week as staff across 14 train operators were set to strike in a dispute over pay and job cuts.
On Wednesday 40,000 Network Rail workers are expected to walk out, grinding services across the country to a halt unless a last minute deal can be reached with unions.
Another two days of industrial action are planned in August.
