Easter weekend travel: Holidaymakers facing air and rail chaos ahead of great getaway

French air strikes and key railway station closures combine to create trying conditions

The Easter getaway will be impeded by a strike by Air France staff as well as widespread closures of the UK rail network, including several key stations.

Thousands of British travellers are likely to have their plans scuppered by the Air France strike on Good Friday, after negotiations broke down between the company and unions representing pilots, cabin crew and ground staff.

The strike is the third in five weeks. The unions are demanding a 6 per cent increase in pay to compensate for what they say are several years of wage stagnation.

Air France saw profits rise by 42 per cent last year to €1.5bn (£1.31bn), and says long-haul forward bookings are strong. The company is offering a 1 per cent rise plus other benefits.

Last Friday, 35 per cent of pilots and around 30 per cent of cabin crew and ground staff stopped work. The airline cancelled 30 per cent of long-haul flights and one in five European operations, including links to Heathrow, Manchester, Edinburgh and other UK airports.

For Friday’s strike, it is chartering in other airlines. One passenger, Yvan Chamoiseau, discovered his flight from Paris to Martinique is to be operated by a Spanish airline named Wamos Air.

“Never heard of Wamos before, so I checked them out online and the reviews are terrible,” he told The Independent.

Passengers booked to fly with Air France on Friday are being offered the choice of postponing their trip to travel between Saturday 31 March and Saturday 5 April 2018 or to cancel and obtain a voucher for future travel on Air France or its partner, KLM.

If the flight is cancelled, passengers are entitled to a full refund in cash.

In Britain, no trains will run to or from three key UK stations over Easter.

Bristol Temple Meads, the busiest station in the west of England, will have no trains between Good Friday and Tuesday 3 April. For five days, the Great Western line to the city from London Paddington and Bath will be closed, as will the CrossCountry line connecting Exeter and Taunton with Cheltenham and Bristol. On a normal day, more than 25,000 passengers use the station.

Manchester Victoria station is completely closed from Good Friday to Easter Monday.

London Euston is closed all day on Easter Sunday for work associated with the HS2 rail project, and there will also be disruption on Saturday and Monday on the West Coast main line. Passengers between London and Glasgow are being advised to travel on Virgin Trains East Coast between London Kings Cross and Edinburgh and change for Glasgow Central.

To Manchester, the recommended route is a train from London St Pancras to Kettering, then a bus to Rugby to connect with rail services.

To Birmingham, passengers are urged to travel via Chiltern Railways between London Marylebone and Birmingham Moor Street - but are warned that trains will be extremely busy.

The main line south east from London Charing Cross to Dover and Hastings is closed for the whole long weekend between Sevenoaks and Tonbridge, because of engineering work in a tunnel beneath the North Downs.

The Great Western line is also disrupted between London Paddington and Reading. With two of the four tracks out of action, High Speed Trains could get caught behind local stopping services. Extra time has been built into the timetable to allow for congestion.

Heathrow airport’s rail services to and from London Paddington will be basically halved through the long weekend, with the Heathrow Express running half-hourly - except on Easter Sunday, when trains will run every 15 minutes as normal.

The South Western Railway line between Waterloo station and Reading is cut between Clapham Junction and Richmond from Good Friday to Easter Monday.

Mark Carne, chief executive of Network Rail, said: “While most of the network is open for business as usual, some routes are heavily affected and so we strongly advise passengers to plan ahead this Easter.

“Our Railway Upgrade Plan is the biggest in a hundred years. A number of massively complex and hugely challenging projects are on the home straight. These will bring faster journeys, more comfort and greater reliability to millions of people who rely on the railway.”