The busiest August bank holiday in history will bring delays and disruption for many thousands of travellers in the skies and on the roads and rails.
Air travel
Research from The Independent newspaper indicates that airports at both Manchester and Luton will have the busiest day of the summer on Friday 24th August
Expected passengers:
- Manchester airport is expecting 111,400 passengers
- Luton predicting 65,000 passengers
- Birmingham airport reach its highest arrival numbers (25,399) and highest total number (42,428)
Liverpool’s John Lennon airport
A total of 80 workers from aviation rescue and firefighting services, the control room, engineering and driver operations and airport bird control will walk out during the bank holiday weekend. The 36-hour strike will begin 7pm on Thursday 23rd August and carry on until 7am Saturday 28th August. This will be followed by a further 12 hour of strike beginning at 7am on Monday 3rd September.
Railway
- One of the biggest ever August bank holiday rail engineering schedules will see 9,600 Network Rail workers carry out more than 400 works costing £84million.
- Britain's fifth busiest station London Euston will be closed for the whole weekend, with west coast main line passengers told to avoid all but essential rail travel
- From Saturday 25th August, the Peak District gateway station of Matlock will be cut off from the rest of the nation by rail for six weeks.
Virgin Trains, the long-distance operator from London Euston to the West Midlands, northwest England, North Wales and Scotland, is urging passengers: “We highly recommend that you avoid travelling on these dates unless absolutely necessary.”
Road
On the roads, according to a survey of drivers’ travel intentions conducted by the RAC and INRIX, Friday and Saturday are likely to be the busiest days on the road for leisure trips. Around 3.6 million cars are expected to be making journeys on both days.
Severe jams are expected on the M5 between junctions 1 and 4 from 9.30am to 2pm on Friday, with travel times an hour longer than usual.
Events
This weekend sees thousands descend on the Leeds and Reading Festival and Victorious Festival in Portsmouth so expect delays around those areas and if attending, make sure you give yourself plenty of time to get there.
