Britain’s biggest festive getaway in years was set to start on Friday, as millions of people took to road, rail and skies to see thei loved ones over Christmas.
Airports, train operators and motoring organisations have all forecast traveller numbers unseen since before the pandemic.
With warnings of a seasonal brew of grim weather and rail replacement buses ahead from Saturday, travel was expected to peak on Friday. The Met Office has issued a yellow warning across much of Britain for strong winds and likely potential disruption to roads, rail, air and sea travel, on Saturday and Sunday.
Congestion was expected to be at its worst on Friday, according to motoring organisations, with the AA’s member surveys pointing to an estimated 23.7m cars on the road – the highest for Christmas traffic since it started logging the data in 2010.
Drivers were most likely to get stuck in motorway traffic jams on the classic annual congestion hotspots, they said: the M4/M5 interchange near Bristol, the M25 near Heathrow, Birmingham’s M5/M6 interchange, the M4 around Cardiff and Newport, and in Scotland, the M8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Rail passengers have been urged to book seats, plan ahead but check for changes with a very busy few days of travel expected, and more people using the trains than last year.
Immediate disruption this weekend includes the start of nine days of work affecting services between London St Pancras and Bedford – meaning Thameslink and East Midlands passengers will need to use buses or go via other routes from the capital.
Nearly 1 million passengers were due to fly away from UK airports on Friday, according to the Civil Aviation Authority, making it the busiest Christmas getaway by air since before the pandemic. A CAA survey claimed 12% would do so to avoid relatives, narrowly below the 13% flying to see them.
The travel organisation Abta said about 4 million people would be spending the Christmas and new year period overseas, with the most popular destinations for winter sun holidays this year being the Canary Islands, southern Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Dubai.
France remains the top destination for skiers, while Amsterdam, Budapest, Dublin, Paris, Prague and Vienna are the top city breaks.
Britain’s biggest airport, London Heathrow, is expecting Christmas travel to ensure its busiest December on record for passengers, topping 6.7 million.
Beyond the weekend getaway, rail passengers face disruption into the new year with a £142m programme of engineering works to start on Christmas Day, with major projects closing some of London’s main stations.
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London Liverpool Street – Britain’s busiest station – will be shut for eight days, and London Paddington for three days. Trains to the south-east England’s four biggest airports – Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton – will all face some disruption.
More than a week of work around Crewe will close the station until the end of 27 December and reduce services to Liverpool and Manchester until early January.
Strikes threaten to disrupt the main intercity services linking London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow around new year, with RMT members at Avanti West Coast planning a series of strikes starting on New Year’s Eve and 2 January.
Only about a quarter of Avanti services are expected to run if talks fail to avert the strikes that had been scheduled earlier in the Christmas period.
People travelling to Ireland by boat will be unable to use the main ferry connection from the Port of Holyhead in North Wales until 15 January, due to storm damage.