Southern Rail: Wrong kind of Bank Holiday weather triggers chaos at Gatwick

'It is a May bank holiday. People want to go to London, people want to go to Brighton. It’s not rocket science,' said passenger Laura Paterson

Southern Rail is under attack again for failing to cope with long-planned Network Rail engineering work which closed the London-Brighton main line just south of Gatwick.

Thousands of passengers heading from the capital to the south coast to enjoy the sunny weather faced waits of up to two hours for replacement buses.

As crowds built up at Britain’s second-busiest airport, Southern Rail, which runs trains on the main line from London Victoria to Brighton, told passengers: “It is strongly advised to not travel towards Brighton today.”

Travellers who wanted to go no further than London to Gatwick in order to catch flights were aghast to be told: “Some trains running from London to Gatwick Airport will be cancelled to prevent further overcrowding.”

Fast trains between Victoria and Brighton normally take 54 minutes. The journey on Sunday, with a bus covering the three-mile journey south from Gatwick Airport to Three Bridges, was scheduled to take twice as long. But many travellers found it was much slower.

Laura Paterson, director of a language school in Brighton, made a protracted day-trip to London.

“It’s been a bit of a palaver,” she told The Independent at Gatwick Airport on her way home.

“We didn’t know it was going to be such amazing weather, but really, it is a May bank holiday. People want to go to London, people want to go to Brighton. It’s not rocket science. A little bit of organisation wouldn’t have hurt.”

A spokesperson for GTR, which operates the Southern franchise, said: “We anticipated that the service would be busy today and given the engineering works and need for rail replacement bus services from Gatwick Airport to Three Bridges we put a queuing system in place at the station.

“At around 11.30am–12.30pm, the number of passengers at the station reached a peak of between 1,500-2,000, the equivalent of two or three trains, with queuing times up to one hour.”

A further 30 buses were brought in to supplement the 60 originally planned.

The spokesperson said: “We are very sorry that passengers travelling to the south coast had to queue for longer than normal for rail replacement buses. “Our passenger information team helped to manage this by referring to longer queuing times and asking passengers to consider not travelling via Gatwick Airport over that time.”

Similar chaos ensued in February when the line north of Gatwick was closed. With insufficient buses to the airport from Redhill, local residents offered lifts to distraught passengers.

At the time, a Southern spokesperson said: “Demand for the rail replacement service has been greater than expected. We will ensure that plans for upcoming weekend engineering works take a higher capacity requirement into consideration.”

The planned engineering works between Gatwick Airport and Three Bridges continue today. The additional “contingency buses” deployed on Sunday will be available on Monday.

One Brighton resident, Richard Alderton, responded to the request for travellers not to go to the city by tweeting: “Can you advise this every time it’s hot please? More beach and pub space for us locals.”

Travellers on the Southern network, which mainly covers south London, Surrey and Sussex, have endured two years of strikes over the role of guards.

Scotland’s busiest station, Glasgow Central, was virtually at a standstill for most of Sunday due to a power failure triggered by overhead wire damage sustained on Saturday evening.

Late on Sunday, Scotrail tweeted: “We are hopeful that we’ll be able to run a full service from tomorrow morning.”

Airline passengers travelling to, from or over southern France faced delays and cancellations due to a strike at the Marseille air-traffic control centre, which covers a large swathe of French territory and the Mediterranean.

The strike ends early on Monday morning, at which point the latest two-day strike by Air France staff will be under way. Pilots, cabin crew and ground staff are continuing their industrial action in support of a pay claim.

The French airline hopes to operate almost all of its long-haul services, but four out of seven departures between Heathrow and Paris have been cancelled.

The Air France chief executive, Jean-Marc Janaillac, resigned on Friday after staff rejected the airline’s pay offer.

Italian air-traffic controllers are also planning a nationwide strike between 10am and 6pm, local time, on Tuesday 8 May.

While intercontinental flights and some services to and from the Italian islands are unaffected, many short-haul departures will be delayed or cancelled. Passengers on Ryanair, easyJet and British Airways face disruption.

BA is allowing passengers booked to or from Italy on Tuesday to travel on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.

The airline said: “Unfortunately, if the threatened strikes go ahead, we will be forced to cancel some flights. We will be using larger aircraft, where possible, to help affected customers and are doing all we can to reduce the levels of disruption.

“Public transport to and from airports could also be affected by the national strike, so please allow extra time for your travel plans before and after your flights.”