Long weekend kicks off with airport chaos as passengers queue in car park

Image: ZENPIX LTD)

The Bank Holiday weekend has started with chaos as Brits were hit with travel disruption across rail, roads and flights today.

Pictures show holidaymakers waiting in a lengthy queue which tailed all the way back to the outside of the terminal at Manchester Airport. It comes following reports of baggage issues, with passengers left outside in the car park at T1. Train stations were also packed to the brim including Kings Cross Station which saw crowds build up before passengers had even left the platforms.

Unfortunately, motorists have also been struck by traffic on the M4. Cars were also stuck in a standstill on the A102(M) Blackwall Tunnel in Greenwich, South East London. On top of the travel misery, the UK has been dampened by constant rain as forecasters stressed that although temperatures might get warm, "outbreaks of rain" are still expected to take place on the weekend.

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Jo Farrow, meteorologist with Netweather, earlier said: "There is still a lot of uncertainty around the early May Bank Holiday weekend weather but there is quite a lot of cloud showing and outbreaks of rain on Saturday. The top temperature looks to be around 21 or 22C, so 72F for a few parts of the UK in any sunshine. It's still a mixed picture. You could be lucky this weekend and see fine weather. However, there is still uncertainty about the details of any patchy rain at the weekend."

Train passengers have been told to brace themselves for eight days of disruption as bank holiday engineering work runs into the next round of industrial action by train drivers. Network Rail said it will carry out 487 planned projects between Saturday and Monday.

The most significant disruption from this work will be on Sunday when no trains will run between London Euston and Milton Keynes, or between Glasgow and England. This is due to engineering schemes on the West Coast Main Line at Crewe, Wigan and other locations. Train services will also be affected by work in Cambridge, Coventry and Liverpool over the bank holiday period. Network Rail's system operator director Anit Chandarana said: "The vast majority of the railway will be open for business as normal.

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"We know people want to travel by train and not replacement bus, and we do our best to fit as much work as we can into these closures to minimise the impact on passengers and freight customers. The work this month will see new track laid on one of the busiest mixed-use railways in the world - the West Coast Main Line - along with work to replace worn-out equipment at junctions at Crewe. We've also got more work to build a new station at Cambridge South, which will play a key role in developing the city and its new biomedical campus in a sustainable way."

Train drivers who are members of the Aslef union at 16 operators will launch a six-day ban on overtime on Monday, which is expected to cause short-notice cancellations. The union's members will also stage three one-day strikes across different operators between May 7 and 9, meaning some parts of the country will have no rail services on those days.

Aslef is embroiled in a nearly two-year dispute over pay, with no talks held for more than a year. Meanwhile, motorists are being warned to expect long delays as millions of people embark on bank holiday getaways. The RAC said it expects 16 million motorists to make a leisure trip by car between Friday and Monday.