Storm Darragh brings travel chaos to UK on rail, air and sea amid weather warnings

Hundreds of flights have been cancelled amid Storm Darragh and several weather warnings

Rail passengers in many parts of Britain are being warned against travel on Saturday as Storm Darragh sweeps across the UK, with many lines blocked or running with speed restrictions.

Hundreds of flights across the country have been diverted or cancelled, with dozens of ferry crossings on the Irish Sea and in the Western Isle of Scotland also cancelled.

These are the key problem areas travellers should be aware of amid several ongoing weather warnings from the Met Office.

Rail

“Avoid travelling if possible,” is the advice from Great Western Railway (GWR). Many lines on the network linking London Paddington with the West of England and South Wales are closed, including Plymouth to Penzance and west from Cardiff to Swansea and on to Carmarthen.

Going places? London Waterloo station, where passengers are being warned of major disruption (Simon Calder)

Trains from Bristol are arriving up to 45 minutes behind schedule due to speed restrictions, resulting in cancellations of later services.

The rail firm said: “Customers are advised to change plans and avoid travelling if possible. No train services are able to run on many parts of the network. Speed restrictions are in place and fallen trees and debris are also impacting services.”

GWR also issued a ‘do not travel’ notice for Sunday – but that is because of an expected shortage of train crew rather than bad weather. Anyone with a ticket for this weekend can use it on Monday.

At London Waterloo, fallen trees are blocking lines across the South Western Railway network. The train firm is warning of “major disruption” on the main lines to and from Portsmouth, Southampton, Bournemouth and Weymouth.

Many Transport for Wales services are cancelled, including the Cambrian coastline, with severe disruption expected on other lines including Cardiff to Manchester.

Avanti West Coast has cancelled services between Chester and Holyhead along the North Wales coastline. In northwest England, a tree is blocking the line between Bolton and Preston.

Elsewhere, speed restrictions will delay many journeys. Typically a limit of 50mph is set, which increases journey times significantly, leading to cancellations. The worry is that fallen trees and debris such as trampolines from people’s back gardens will block tracks.

Trees and other debris has blown across train tracks as a result of the storm (EPA)

CrossCountry, which connects the English regions and reaches into southern Scotland and South Wales, has cut many trains, including direct services from Newcastle to Reading, Gloucester to Cardiff and Cambridge to Stansted Airport.

ScotRail will not run between Aberdeen and Inverness, and most other lines in Scotland have speed restrictions.

But Network Rail says it has fixed the fault in the railway’s communications network that blighted many journeys during the Friday morning rush hour.

Airlines

Flights are in disarray across the UK, with hundreds of cancellations and some extreme diversions. Passengers due to be arriving at Manchester Airport from Abu Dhabi on Etihad spent one hour flying around in circles waiting to land – and eventually diverted to Frankfurt in Germany. The Boeing 777 is now expected to fly to Manchester at lunchtime.

At London Heathrow, the busiest airport in the UK, many flights have been diverted or cancelled. Brussels was the destination for diverted transatlantic flights including Delta from Atlanta, American Airlines from Dallas and Air Canada from Calgary.

Plane struggles to land at London Heathrow as Storm Darragh hits UK with wind speeds reaching 90mph (Big Jet TV)

Outbound flights to those destinations will also be disrupted because of the diversions.

British Airways has made more than 100 short-haul domestic and European cancellations at London Heathrow, including multiple flights to and from Edinburgh, Jersey, Milan, Nice and Vienna.

Holiday departures to and from Malaga, Larnaca and Gibraltar are among those grounded.

Many other airlines’ flights are cancelled, including Lufthansa to and from Frankfurt and Munich, and KLM from Amsterdam.

Aer Lingus has grounded links from Cork, Dublin, Knock and Shannon to Heathrow.

George Best Belfast City airport has seen at least 30 arrivals and departures cancelled to and from airports across Britain including Cardiff, London Heathrow, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow. At Belfast International airport, easyJet cancelled flights to and from Bristol and Liverpool.

At Bristol airport, the early morning Ryanair arrival from Venice was diverted to London Stansted while a KLM flight from Amsterdam landed instead at Birmingham. At least two dozen easyJet flights are grounded at Bristol, including to and from Barcelona, Porto and Geneva.

The airline is telling passengers: “Following guidance from the UK government to avoid travel within the Bristol area during the morning of 7 December, regrettably we’ve been unable to operate your flight today.”

Across the Bristol Channel, Cardiff Airport has a few cancellations – and a cargo plane from China earlier this morning diverted to Bournemouth. Ryanair flew in from Dublin to the Welsh capital, while Tui operated an Alicante flight from Cardiff.

Flights to and from Ireland are disrupted, including Aer Lingus from Cork and Shannon to Heathrow.

Ferries

Across the Irish Sea, all sailings on P&O Ferries between Cairnryan and Larne are cancelled on Saturday. Stena Line between Cairnryan and Belfast is cancelled until the early evening.

No Holyhead-Dublin or Fishguard-Rosslare ferries will operate all day on the Stena Line. It’s a similar picture on Irish Ferries between Pembroke and Rosslare.

In Scotland, Caledonian MacBrayne ferries serving the Western Isles are cancelled to and from Arran, Islay, Lewis, Mull and other islands.