Britons stuck in hour-long bottlenecks at Calais
Hundreds of Britons returning home from abroad have been stuck in hour-long queues at the Port of Calais.
Ferry operators P&O and DFDS have apologised for the bottlenecks at the border, telling travellers to arrive at least 90 minutes ahead of their expected departure.
“Please be advised there are currently wait times of 90-120 minutes at [the] UK border controls,” P&O tweeted. “This is after check-in so please arrive at check-in at least 90 minutes before your booked departure to allow you to clear checks and get on your booked departure…”
DFDS said in a Twitter update that queues at Calais lasted up to 150 minutes, but traffic was flowing freely at Dover.
“Calais was affected by ‘the perfect storm’ of summer volumes in combination with post-Brexit border checks, causing six hours of queuing,” a DFDS spokesperson told the BBC.
“We worked together with partners to reduce the queues as quickly as we could.”
Morning Wire has approached the Home Office and the Port of Calais for comment.
Nevertheless, Sunday’s traffic was significantly better compared with Saturday’s levels.
On Saturday afternoon DFDS warned travellers there were queues at check-in lasting up to 5/6 hours while P&O said they were increasing the number of sailings.
The travel chaos hit UK travellers also in late July as thousands of people were stuck in lengthy queues at the UK port of Dover due to a combination of insufficient staffing levels at the French border and increased controls post-Brexit.