December 11th - How to avoid 'Frenetic Friday' this Christmas
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2023
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With just two weeks to go to Christmas, I'm in Tirana airport giving you an update on how to avoid the dreaded 'Frenetic Friday' great getaway. In this episode I'll be talking about the situation at UK airports, across Britain's rail network and also what the situation will look like on the roads.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Monday the 11th of December, which means two weeks. Yes, can you believe it, until Christmas Day? Who would have thought it? Anyway, I have been going through talking to all the |
| 0:23.4 | big operators of trains of planes of ferries and it was also to the motoring |
| 0:30.0 | organisations to find out when things are going to be at their worst in terms of |
| 0:36.0 | travel and that means when are they going to be the most crowded and it's really relevant i'm here at an airport in fact i didn't want to pick a favorite so i'm at tyrana airport in albania obviously and therefore i wanted to go through and tell you when to avoid travelling if you possibly can, |
| 0:57.0 | or at least how to prepare for it if you haven't got any choice. |
| 1:01.0 | So, Fly Away Friday is what I have dubbed the 22nd of December, and here is why. |
| 1:10.0 | I cannot recall a previous Christmas where there has been so much |
| 1:15.2 | focus on a particular day. But the thing is, Friday's always at airports, a very busy day, |
| 1:22.2 | you've got a mix of people going away for leisure trips and you've got the usual amount of business travel as |
| 1:28.6 | well Friday the 22nd of December also is going to be kind of the last sensible |
| 1:34.3 | day for some people before Christmas and of course people will be finishing work |
| 1:39.9 | maybe on the Thursday and then flying off the UK's's busiest airport, of course, is London Heathrow, |
| 1:47.3 | and that handles far more passengers than any other. |
| 1:51.1 | And they tell me that, yes, definitely Friday the 22nd is going to be the busiest day. |
| 1:56.4 | I believe the same applies at Gatwick. |
| 1:59.4 | It certainly does at most other airports. |
| 2:01.8 | However, for Manchester, for Stansted, for East Midlands, which are all part of the same group, |
| 2:06.4 | actually the busiest day is Saturday the 23rd of December, but frankly there's not much in it. |
| 2:13.8 | Those days are going to be the busiest for pretty much everyone. |
| 2:18.3 | The one outlier actually is, would you believe, Newcastle Airport, which tells me that the 29th of December, also a Friday, is going to be busiest. |
| 2:29.3 | In terms of the railways, it's going to be really, really tough for a lot of intercity travellers. |
| 2:36.0 | That's because we've got on Christmas Eve two of the key London hubs shutting. |
... |
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