Christmas strikes – live: Thousands of flights to be disrupted by Border Force walkout

More than a quarter of a million passengers arriving in thousands of flights to the UK today have been warned of delays due to strikes by Border Force staff.

The walkout by more than 1,000 Border Force staff will affect travellers at Heathrow, Birmingham, Cardiff, Gatwick, Glasgow and Manchester airports, and the port of Newhaven in East Sussex.

Motorists have been warned that their journey home for Christmas could spiral into a “nightmare” as traffic surges to pre-pandemic levels and road workers stage four days of strikes.

Close to 17 million drivers are expected on the roads on each of the next two days, according to the AA, with others estimating that a third of regular train users will choose to travel by car instead in the face of wide-scale industrial action by rail workers.

But drivers could face a higher-than-usual risk of “life-threatening” delays for assistance in the event of a motorway breakdown, as frontline National Highways staff also walk out from Thursday until Christmas in London and the South East as part of an industrial dispute.

Royal Mail has warned customers that the walkouts are “likely to cause you some disruption” in the run-up to Christmas.

Having already downed tools on several dates in recent months and on 1, 9 and 11 December, members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) responsible for collecting, sorting and delivering letters and parcels did so again on Wednesday, Thursday and today, placing Christmas deliveries in jeopardy.“

Royal Mail has well-developed contingency plans, but we cannot fully replace the daily efforts of our frontline workforce,” the company said on its website.

Members of the RMT union who work for Network Rail are walking out from 6pm on Christmas Eve until 6am on 27 December.

Travellers planning to catch trains on 24 December are being urged to travel only “if absolutely necessary, and if possible to consider travelling another day”.

Last trains are leaving as early as 8am and some locations will see no services at all, including the East Midlands line from Sheffield, Nottingham and Leicester to London.

DHL is the UK’s least reliable courier firm, a survey has suggested, as postal workers walk out again – the fifth of seven strike days this month.

The industrial action has prompted a warning to shoppers not to rely on online orders for Christmas. The British Independent Retailers Association said people should go into stores in person if they want to get gifts before the big day.

Parcel companies say the postal strikes are driving up demand for their services, in some cases forcing them to delay next-day deliveries as people and firms seek alternatives to the Royal Mail. But new research has revealed a slew of Christmas “delivery disasters” last year.

Between Thursday (22 December) and Sunday (8 January), The Independent has calculated that up to a quarter of a million trains will not run as they would in normal times as festive engineering work and staff shortages exacerbate the worst strike action since the 1980s.

The leading cause of disruption is the sustained series of strikes by members of the RMT union. In the past six months, workers for Network Rail – the infrastructure provider – and around a dozen train operators have walked out on 12 days.

Britain has had a difficult time of it in 2022, emerging in two years from the grip of Covid only to be confronted by a dire cost-of-living crisis defined by runaway inflation and rocketing energy bills exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Now, as Christmas approaches, there is a new “winter of discontent”, with the country’s unions, representing workers from a wide range of public-facing professions, concluding that they have no choice but to undertake industrial action as their calls for improved pay and working conditions go unanswered while rising prices erode earnings.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union has organised strike days throughout December and into January, as 40,000 workers down tools at one of the busiest periods of the year in a bid to force improved terms.

• Royal Mail postal workers
• East Midlands Railways
• Driving examiners – northern England and Scotland
• Border Force staff – Gatwick, Heathrow, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Cardiff airports

Thousands of postal service staff will stage a walkout in a move that the Royal Mail has criticised as “a cynical attempt to hold Christmas to ransom”.

This will be the fifth day of strikes by the postal service staff.

Members of the border force, national highways, driver and vehicle standards agency are also due to take industrial action on today.

More than 10,000 British Airways passengers have had long-haul flights cancelled due to what the airline calls “a technical issue”.

Dozens of transatlantic flights to London were delayed or cancelled overnight – and at least 20 departures are grounded today because planes and crews are out of position.

So what does this mean for travel plans – and what rights do passengers have?

The fault is understood to involve BA’s global flight planning system, which is essential to the airline’s operations. It failed as the nightly wave of overnight departures from the US, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean were preparing to depart.