National Express adds extra seats to help ease rail strike chaos
National Express will add thousands of extra seats this bank holiday weekend in face of a national rail strike.
The coach company said it would keep adding services, particular to airports, to help stranded passengers and ease the chaos.
It has already added more than 10,000 extra seats on Friday May 22 to Tuesday May 26 after seeing bookings soar by 25% and up to 110% on certain routes.
It said London to Stansted Airport is the most popular coach route over the two days of the strike, as passengers with plane tickets search for alternatives, followed by Bristol to London and Bournemouth to London.
But according to the latest reports, Network Rail is now threatening legal action to partially head off the strike, claiming ‘defects’ in one union strike ballot.
A Guardian newspaper report says it has asked the TSSA rail union, which represents a minority of Network Rail employees, to cancel the strike or face legal action.
But the ballot of the RMT, the largest rail union with 16,000 members, has not been challenged.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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