Christmas Travel LIVE: Traffic chaos on motorways while flights cancelled

National Express, Megabus and FlixBus will operate many hundreds of coach journeys between them on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, including to and from airports.

National Express has added departures between central London and Luton and Stansted airports, as well as extra coaches from Bristol, Norwich, Manchester and Livepool to London. Additional services will also connect Liverpool with Manchester (city and airport) and Leeds. More coaches will run from South Wales and Bristol to Heathrow and Gatwick airports.

Advance booking is strongly recommended, especially for airport links. National Express is offering a 10 per cent discount for online bookings in December using the promo code DEC10.

Some local bus services will run on 25 December. In Merseyside, 10 routes are operating – mainly serving hospitals – and all buses are free for the day.

Edinburgh residents can use a reasonably comprehensive network, including regular buses between the centre of the Scottish capital and the airports.

In Manchester, the only Christmas Day service will be bus 43 between Manchester airport and Piccadilly, once an hour.

Gatwick airport will have regular buses from Crawley, while Slough is connected with Heathrow airport all day.

On the Isle of Wight, Southern Vectis will run a near-normal schedule on Christmas Day.

Elsewhere, some other local operators have a skeleton service, particularly linking hospitals.

Scotland’s central belt will have many trains running, centred on Edinburgh and Glasgow. The biggest 26 December operation for decades will see links between the two cities and extending north and northeast to Perth, Dundee and Arbroath, as well as a busy network in Strathclyde.

In England, trains will be extremely rare. Those that will run include:

• London Underground and Docklands Light Railway on a reduced Sunday service; the Elizabeth Line will not operate.
• London Overground between Highbury & Islington and West Croydon and between Clapham Junction and Stratford.
• London Victoria-Gatwick Airport-Brighton: hourly services from 8.30am to 8.30pm. Some other south London suburban trains will run to and from Victoria.
• Tottenham Hale-Stansted Airport: half-hourly services from 6.45am to 11.15pm. Tottenham Hale is on the Victoria Line of the London Underground, which will be running.
• Merseyrail (local network around Liverpool): 9am-6pm, not all lines/stations. “Additional services will be available between Liverpool and Aintree to support those attending the Boxing Day races,” the train operator says.

No trains will run in Wales or Northern Ireland.

Eurostar will run a full service from London St Pancras International to Paris (15 trains each way) and Brussels (eight trains each way).

Drivers have been warned which major routes to avoid this Christmas season as experts predict a record number of festive trips will be made.

Around 29.3 million Christmas journeys will take place between Wednesday and 24 December, the RAC has estimated, with nearly half taking place on the pre-Christmas weekend alone.

Surveying over 2,000 drivers, the motoring group has urged festive commuters when to avoid major routes over the coming days.

My colleague Albert Toth has more in this report:

Trains will start to go home to their depots for Christmas from late afternoon onwards, with services on most routes shutting down early. Last direct trains on key intercity routes on 24 December include:

• London King’s Cross-Edinburgh: 5.30pm/Edinburgh-London King’s Cross: 4.13pm
• London Euston-Manchester Piccadilly: 5.55pm/Manchester Piccadilly-London Euston: 6.13pm
• London Paddington-Cardiff Central: 7.48pm/Cardiff Central-London Paddington: 8.18pm
• London Victoria-Gatwick Airport: 8.45pm/Gatwick Airport-London Victoria: 7.32pm
• Bristol Temple Meads-Leeds: 4.35pm/Leeds-Bristol Temple Meads: 4.11pm
• Glasgow Queen Street-Aberdeen: 6.41pm/Aberdeen-Glasgow Queen Street: 6.36pm

No passenger trains will run on any UK rail line on Christmas Day.

All Caledonian Sleeper services between London and Scotland are cancelled until Friday 27 December, while the Night Riviera Sleeper linking London with Plymouth and Penzance is out of action until Friday 3 January.

Drivers planning Christmas getaways have been warned by the AA to expect possible congestion over the run-up to Christmas in the following areas:

Manchester Victoria has been revealed as the station with the highest percentage of service cancellations in 2024 in an analysis of the busiest train stations in the UK.

Around 9.5 per cent of all scheduled stops in Manchester Victoria were found to have been cancelled between January and November this year, according to a BBC analysis of National Rail figures collected by train data website On Time Trains.

More than three million stops were cancelled across the UK between January and November this year, which amounts to 3.8 per cent of nearly 83 million scheduled.

The north-west of England was the worst region for cancellations due to having the highest rate at 6.5 per cent, which amounts to 611,047 cancellations.

My colleague Amelia Neath reports:

Holidaymakers flying ahead of 25 December will have checked their suitcase and probably packed it twice – but it’s best to leave the gift wrapping until you land.

Whether headed for a destination Christmas or visiting far-flung family, travellers may want to keep sentimental gifts close in their carry-on when taking off.

But, passengers are now being warned to ditch wrapping efforts before passing through security checks to avoid line delays and gift confiscations.

Natalie Wilson has more details in this report: