Easter Eggravation

Pictured: the queue for the loos at Terminal 5 on Monday (no, not really)

Two simple words have pretty much dominated the headlines in the UK media every day of this week.

"TRAVEL CHAOS 😱😱😱"

But what exactly is happening, and how concerned should you be about your own upcoming travel plans?

Well, it does appear to be a perfect Easter storm out there right now, sadly, and there are a few different reasons for this:

• As COVID cases rise again across the UK, there has been a clear and significant knock-on effect on airline staffing. Both British Airways and EasyJet have reported staff shortages, leading to the cancellation of a number of flights.
• Airports across the UK and Ireland - with Heathrow, Manchester, Birmingham and Dublin being the worst offenders - have been reporting epic queues and delays.
• This has been partly blamed on a huge surge of travellers as entry requirements worldwide are removed and passenger numbers skyrocket towards pre-pandemic levels. (Could this have been predicted? Yes, but new staff take time to recruit and train.) There can also be no doubt that airports are experiencing COVID-related staff shortages, with a knock-on effect on security and baggage handling.
• It’s all got so bad that Manchester Airport’s managing director stepped down yesterday.
• And just in case you were thinking, “Oh, maybe this will all blow over in time for the Easter weekend,” the BBC is reporting that we’re likely to see additional delays in England due to rail and Tube closures that will affect travel to Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. Yeuch.
• Meanwhile, the Dover crossing has been swamped with traffic, due to a lack of ferries after the P&O mass-sacking crisis a few weeks back. And just to add a cherry on top, the Eurotunnel was blocked this week after a train broke down midway beneath the Channel, causing further delays.
• Oh, and P&O have actively warned travellers not to bother coming to Dover for an Easter break in France, as all of the rival ferries are already booked up.

In other words, it’s all looking a bit like this Elmo gif.

Isn’t there any good news?

Well, the Liverpool Echo (who may perhaps be biased) has been bragging that Liverpool Airport is seeing a “lack of queues” compared to Manchester. But otherwise…no, not really.

Well, what can I do about it?

You should obviously be leaving yourself a lot more time for travel than you usually would - Heathrow has been advising travellers to arrive at the terminal three hours ahead of their flight.

But even that’s not completely foolproof - queues have been reported in Manchester Airport as early as 4.45am, so unless you want to go full Tom Hanks in the Terminal and actually live in the airport, there are no perfect guarantees.

Here’s our advice on minimising the risks as much as you can:

#1: If you can, monitor the situation. Some airports have been better about tracking their queues than others, which gives you an advantage. Edinburgh Airport, bless them, have set up a live ‘security queue time tracker’ on their homepage. Gatwick’s official app offers the same updates.

(Not to resurrect the third-runway rivalry, but Heathrow has said that queues would be too complicated to monitor live.)

#2: Consider your luggage. You may not like the idea of heading out to the terminal twice in 48 hours, but a few airlines and airports offer a night-before-travel bag-drop - which might be worth considering to save you a few grey hairs on the day.

Jet2 allows you to drop off your luggage from 3-8pm the night before your flight. The service operates at some of the worst-hit airports, including Manchester and Birmingham.

British Airways operates a 6-9pm bag drop at Heathrow Terminal 5 for morning flights the following day.

Be warned that Gatwick has previously operated a TUI, EasyJet and BA bag drop in the terminal, but the service is currently suspended.

If this isn’t an option for you, it might be best to downsize to hand luggage for an Easter weekend trip, to ensure you aren’t left waiting for your suitcase on either end.

#3: Put flexibility first. The number of actual flight cancellations might not be as alarming as the headlines make out. One Daily Mail article from earlier this week states that “ BA cancelled at least 115 flights to or from Heathrow Airport on Monday, although it is believed only five were last-minute cancellations.”

In other words, the vast majority of those flights were cancelled well in advance, and the odds of having your trip suddenly ruined at the last second are low - but that’s no reason to take a chance, and the risk of getting stuck in security and missing your flight definitely is a serious possibility.

Double-check all your reservations to ensure they’re flexible; double-check your travel insurance policy to make sure you’re covered if you miss your flight through no fault of your own.

As the Daily Mirror suggests, if you’re stuck in security and it looks like you’re going to miss your flight, alert terminal staff and see if they can skip you to the front of the queue. If they can’t help you, call your airline right away to let them know.

#4: Investigate fast-track, but don’t rely on it.Various airports offer ‘fast-track’ check-in schemes to offer you a speedier journey through the terminal, in theory. However, as Which? notes in their round-up of prices, there’s no actual guarantee that fast-track lines will be any quicker than regular check-in.

(We’ve also seen news reports of fast-track passengers at both Manchester and Dublin who got stuck in a queue and missed their flight anyway.)

#5: Don’t show up at Dover over the Easter break if you don’t have a ferry ticket already booked. Just don’t. You can see Normandy next year.

Hopefully that gives you a good starting point for a stress-free Easter! If you’re travelling, good luck, stay safe, and maybe take a good book for the security queue. We’ll see you on the other side.

Our Pick of the Clicks

All the important (or silly, or strange) travel news from across the web this week.

• This apparently isn’t an April Fools - a superjumbo jet just successfully completed a flight using cooking oil as fuel. (Bet the pilot was glad to get out of there olive.)
• This Turkish dessert is the oldest in the world, according to the BBC - but you’ll have to visit Anatolia to try it for yourself.
• After rerouting to avoid Russian airspace, the 10,000-mile Cathay schlep from Hong Kong to New York has the dubious honour of becoming the world’s longest flight.
• Here’s something cool for your earbuds - Wanderlust Magazine has just launched its first travel podcast, featuring adventurers and explorers from across the globe.
• And finally, CN Traveller is offering an epic seven-day South African adventure prize draw to UK travellers who participate in their Reader’s Choice Awards 2022. (Fight you for it.)

Save an extra £20 on TUI flights!

If you're booking a flight with TUI for the summer, just a quick FYI - our lucky Premium members have access to an exclusive £20 discount code on long-haul flights. (Use that extra cash to pick up some really good duty-free chocolates.)

If you're on Premium, you can grab the code from your Perks page.

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Meet Kim

In today’s Detour, we’re speaking to the amazing Kim, the Travelling Surrogate.

In 2021, Kim set out on an adventure across the world, six months after giving birth - you can see more of her travels and experiences on her Instagram page and YouTube channel.

Kim and her partner Dilara, on a date!

I never really had a chance to travel when I was younger. I come from a working-class family, and we only went on cheap resort holidays once every couple of years.

Then I visited Marrakech in 2015 with my best friend. That experience changed everything for me - the culture shock, the sights, the sounds, the smells! It was just unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

It also woke me up to the fact that travel doesn’t need to be expensive. We took a pair of ridiculously cheap £5 Ryanair flights, and we must have spent much less in a week in Morocco than I'd normally spend at home.

My surrogacy and travel

I always knew that I wanted to be a surrogate. My mum had been a surrogate for parents who couldn’t conceive - I just always had it in mind that I was going to make that choice during my twenties.

When I felt like I was ready, I called my HR team at work, I explained the situation, and I asked them about how the usual company policies would apply to me: how would it work if I was going to be a surrogate?

They said, “From our perspective, we don’t have any surrogacy specific policies for the surrogate. You will be treated the same as any pregnant employee. You will be entitled to full maternity leave, so you can expect to have 26 weeks paid, 13 weeks’ statutory maternity leave and 13 weeks unpaid.”

I was pleased to hear I would have the full entitlement and started thinking about how I could make use of that time, after the birth.

I decided that I wanted to travel; to spend that year having the opportunities I never got to take when I was younger!

COVID-19

I had a lot of big plans. I was going to travel immediately post-partum, to circumnavigate the globe overland. I wanted to really get a feel of the sheer distances I was travelling - sitting on trains, and buses, watching the world change all around me.

COVID made that difficult, obviously, so my itinerary ended up being a bit of a mess!

Kim in the Altea Hills of Spain

I didn’t know if land-border crossings would be open. So I decided to narrow down my travel plans and mostly focus on Europe, taking a lot of smaller trips - four or six weeks at a time, and then coming home for a quick rest.

I embarked on my first trip at the beginning of September 2021, flying into Santander in Spain on a £20 flight. Then I just travelled through the country for the next five weeks, enjoying the amazing food and the sangria.

My favourite destination was probably Bosnia and Herzegovina, the city of Mostar. I think a lot of travellers still dismiss it unfairly as an ‘unsafe’ country, as the Bosnian War still feels relatively recent.

But the people were all really nice, the food was incredible, it has a fantastic local beer scene…the weather was miserable, but I still had a wonderful time, which I think is the mark of a great trip!

A view of Mostar

Jack's notes: Mostar is absolutely stunning! While you're there, I hugely recommend a stop off to the astonishingly beautiful Kravica Waterfall, about an hour's drive to the south - it can get busy in the summer, but it really does look like nothing else in this world.

I have a couple more short-haul trips planned to Ireland and Scotland, then I’m heading out to Thailand. I’ll be there for a month, and then that’ll be the end of my maternity leave, so it’ll be back to work for me!

Travelling solo on a budget

My fiancée came out and joined me on a few occasions - honestly, my most memorable travel moments were spent with her! - but the majority of the time I spent travelling solo, moving from hostel to hostel.

There’s also a Facebook group I use, called Host A Sister: it’s like Couchsurfing, but specifically for female hosts to put up solo female travellers, and for women to pair up for travelling together. It’s a great way to meet locals and save money!

I adore it. Also, you meet so many people in hostels, you make so many temporary friends, and some will be life-long besties!

I think once you’ve been to a few ‘easy’ countries (my first solo trip was to Stockholm, back when I was 19, which is of course very safe), you start to relax about travelling alone. You just have to trust your instincts and think carefully about where you feel comfortable going, what you feel comfortable doing…

When it comes to budget, I have very simple needs as a person! I set a daily budget, subject to the local costs in each country, and then I stick to it.

In Spain, I budgeted myself at £60 a day, but in the Balkans, I could eat out for £3, so I set harsher limits on myself. I tried to eat street food rather than visiting restaurants, and I cooked for myself whenever I could.

My top hostel recommendation is Costello, in La Spezia, northern Italy.

The owner is the friendliest, most genuine person I’ve ever met. I was there in the off-season, and there were only three of us staying in the hostel, but he kept it open for an extra day just to ensure we could experience it all for ourselves.

We wanted to see the Cinque Terre villages - five car-free fishing villages along the coast - and he gave us so many brilliant recommendations for hiking away from the usual tourist paths.

It’s the people who always make a place so special when you’re travelling.

Jack's notes: I'd love to see the Cinque Terre hiking trails! If you're feeling inspired, the travel blog Along Dusty Roads has a useful practical guide to get you started, including advice on footwear, entry costs for the Blue Trail, and the best months to visit (they recommend April, May, September, October, and November.)

Kim, hiking on the Cinque Terre trail.

My advice around post-partum travel

Honestly, when I was pregnant, I was a bit naive thinking I could just go ahead with travel straight after giving birth - and that’s even without having a child to take care of at the end of it!

There was the pain and exhaustion of labour, and the caesarean itself. I began to express milk, my hormones were changing all the time. I didn’t feel like myself, and I had no get-up and go.

I didn’t set off on my travels until I was physically recovered, six months after giving birth.

But even then, it took me a while longer to recover mentally. I had palpitations, and anxiety. I remember I was pushing myself too hard to get around the Balkans - I visited five countries in seven days - and one morning I just woke up in my hostel room, delirious, thinking, “Which country am I in now?”

Take it slow, that’s my advice. And hats off to any women who are thinking about travelling with a child!

A huge thank-you to Kim for sharing her stories and insights! If you think you might have a travel story to share, we'd love to hear from you - drop us a line at [email protected].

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