Airport bosses have apologised for huge queues on 'Manic Monday' with thousands of families enduring Easter travel chaos.
There were long queues at Manchester Airport this morning as a packed Easter Monday saw at least 20 flights between Scotland and London being cancelled by British Airways and easyJet.
Flights have also been cancelled to Heathrow from cities including Paris, Amsterdam and Geneva.
And passengers at Eurostar are facing nightmare queues at Gare Du Nord in Paris after a border control IT failure in France meant travellers could not board trains.
Traffic congestion was reported in almost every county as almost four million drivers took to the road.
The AA estimated there had been a total of 47 million car trips between Good Friday and Easter Monday.
Rail and air passengers saw long queues while P&O Dover-Calais ferries remained suspended over the weekend.
This morning brought “nightmare” queues for Eurostar customers at Gare Du Nord in Paris after a border control IT failure which meant passengers could not board trains.
One passenger, Charlie Daffern, 36, from Cheltenham, said all trains had been delayed for at least an hour.
“It’s a nightmare here,” he said. “ We have been stood in the queue for check-in/security for over an hour and a half. Probably another hour to go.
“People are becoming very restless.”
Loic Kreseski, 25, who lives in Hackney, said “hundreds and hundreds” were in queues at the station.
“I heard French border officers saying that they had never seen that.”
Travellers using the EuroTunnel Le Shuttle service also reported “chaos” with long traffic queues.
Yesterday afternoon there were significant road delays on roads leading to the French Channel ports.
There were long delays on the A64 in and out of York, and the A1 on the Doncaster bypass.
There were also problems on the M25 anti-clockwise at Staines with traffic down to crawling speeds of 20mph and 20 minute delays.
Traffic built up heading away from the south coast at lunchtime.
There was slow traffic travelling east on the A30 out of Devon and delays on the M5 and M4 there was stop start traffic down much of the M5, with delays of 55 minutes being reported.
A crash near Exeter’s junction 29 caused delays, while stop-start holiday traffic was reported in Somerset.
There was queuing traffic on the M6 southbound from the Lake District to Lancashire with stop start traffic and also holdups in both directions of the M6 around Birmingham.
There were also hold-ups on the A55 and M56 heading out of north Wales.
A lot of people seemed to have set off for home earlier than originally planned as temperatures dropped at coastal resorts.
The UK is set to cool down further over the next few days, putting an end to the balmy weather conditions over the Easter weekend.
In London, it will start to feel chilly under clear skies according to the Met Office.
The sunshine is forecast to disappear and, despite today(tuesday) seeing a mostly bright start, the afternoon will be cloudy.
Scattered showers will develop across the south from late morning, turning heavy at times with the odd rumble of thunder possible.
The outlook for the rest of the week is for lots of dry, if at times cloudy weather. Some shower for western areas tomorrow after early morning fog clears. An easterly wind will also pick up bringing the temperatures “creeping down” as the days go by but temperatures will remain slightly above average through the week, the Met Office said.
There have been reported delays of at least 30 minutes with pictures and video showing huge queues at the terminal.
In addition, the Dover-Calais sailings by P&O Ferries shortages have added to the large queues of lorries on the roads approaching the Port of Dover in recent days.
Experts have said more passengers on the railways will cause delays in addition to the 530 rail upgrades - costing £83m - taking place tomorrow.
One user on Twitter who was facing cancelled and delayed trains at Eurostar wrote: 'Absolute carnage at Paris Gare du Nord. Every train late, massive queues in the station and organised chaos.'
A Tui spokesperson said: "We can confirm that unfortunately due to staff shortages at Manchester Airport today, some customers are experiencing longer-than-usual queue times at check-in. Please be assured that our teams are working as quickly as they can.
"We have contacted all customers due to depart in the next two weeks with advice on travelling with potential wait times in airports and have more information available on our website."
However, as a result of the recent weeks of travel chaos, ministers have come up with a plan to relax counter-terrorism checks for new staff so they can be deployed faster.
The planned changes could see staff trained in airports without security vetting - on the condition they will not be allowed to work with access to planes and runways.
Presently, vetting can reportedly take twice as long as the 14 and 15 weeks it is supposed to be completed by the Department for Transport (DfT) and industry.
And ministers are being urged to relax the rules as airports are struggling to keep up with demand with recent spikes in Covid have lead to an industry shortfall of staff with some off sick and other airlines failing to fill staff shortages. This has led to more delays at Birmingham, Gatwick, Heathrow, and Manchester.
Immigration Services Union general secretary Lucy Moreton said: "This weekend, catastrophically understaffed, with people travelling again, we anticipate queues will move from security-based queues going outward to Border Force queues coming back in."
