In the next few days, travel will reach its limits.
Whit Monday is a nationwide public holiday. Many Germans will use the long weekend to plan small trips. In Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the Pentecost holidays also begin.
It doesn’t matter whether you are traveling by car, motorbike or mobile home: be prepared for long traffic jams. Handling of flights could be delayed, travelers should check in in good time. But the trains and buses are also getting crowded because many want to use the 9-euro ticket.
Long queues and frustration at the airport
Because there is a lack of staff in baggage handling and security, there are currently problems at many German airports. Travelers should allow several hours for clearance. In Great Britain and the Netherlands, extremely long queues had formed in the previous days, reaching down to the street. Similar images could – in summer – also threaten at German airports.
Why are there long waiting times at the airport?
During the Corona crisis, airports and airlines alike reduced staff.
However, due to the abolition of the corona measures, the number of passengers is skyrocketing. The problem is that airports and airlines cannot fill the missing staff fast enough. Application processes are ongoing and there is a lack of applicants.
The situation could worsen in the summer months. Even before Corona, many airlines were overwhelmed by the rush. Especially with low-cost airlines, travelers sometimes had to wait in line for several hours before they could even reach the check-in counter.
FOCUS Online advises:
1. Get to the airport on time. In particular, if you have baggage to check in, you should be at the airport at least three hours before the scheduled departure for flights within the EU. For departures outside the EU, four hours are appropriate.
2. Think about the waiting time at the security check. Because many people only book flight fares with hand luggage for cost reasons, the security check is also delayed. Many pieces of baggage have to be checked again, which means that this process takes longer. Expect long waiting times on the Pentecost weekend and in the summer months. Compared to check-in, you cannot use online services in advance at the security checkpoint.
3. Note flight status. Is there a delay? Has the departure changed and do you now have to go to a different gate? Find out about possible changes in advance. You can check the current flight status via the airline’s app and the airport’s website.
4. Think about your documents. You must present your ticket and identification document (identity card or passport) at check-in and at the security check. For a few holiday countries, vaccination, recovery and test documentation are also mandatory.
Full trains are threatened because of the 9-euro ticket
The federal government introduced the 9-euro ticket on June 1st. This allows travelers to use local public transport for a calendar month for 9 euros. The ticket is also valid in the DB Regio network of Deutsche Bahn. As a result, holidaymakers can travel across Dusseldorf with the regional express, the regional train or the Interregio-Express. City trips seem to be particularly popular.
The Pro Bahn passenger association expects up to 25 percent more passengers in the period up to the end of August, when the 9-euro ticket is valid. Karl-Peter Naumann from Pro Bahn expects that the additional capacity provided on the heavily used railway lines will not be sufficient. “We therefore recommend that passengers, especially in leisure traffic, think twice about whether they really want to travel to destinations that are already heavily frequented by tourists.”
The railway subsidiary DB Regio Bayern also warned of “an additional increase in capacity utilization” in regional trains to tourist locations such as Kochel am See, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Oberstdorf and Lindau on Lake Constance. In express trains such as from Munich to Nuremberg or from Würzburg to Bamberg, it can also get full because of the 9-euro ticket.
Not only the 9-euro ticket could cause train frustration! Numerous construction sites slow down traffic over Pentecost. At Deutsche Bahn, construction activity over the long weekend is concentrated primarily in the north, west and south-west. Construction is also going on on the routes between Hamburg and Hanover, as well as between Frankfurt and Mannheim, Dortmund and Düsseldorf or in the central Rheinthal. Among other things, the construction work led to “longer travel times, train and stop failures or additional changes,” it said.
train is full! When am I no longer allowed to board?
If you can, you should avoid the trains that are in such demand. If the train is full, a ride is not guaranteed.
FOCUS Online learned from the train: For safety reasons, travelers have to get off when a train is more than 200 percent occupied – i.e. when there are more than twice as many passengers as there are seats on the train. If necessary, this will be enforced with the help of the federal police
Here’s what you can do about it:
1. Ideally, check whether the train is overloaded or not. The DB Navigator app can help with this.
2. Switch to private providers, IC, EC or ICE. If local trains are overloaded, you can switch to long-distance trains or third-party providers. However, the 9-euro ticket is not valid on these trains. You can also save money on popular routes due to reduced demand.
3. If the train is congested, check if a 1st class seat reservation is available, also check if there are alternative train services or private bus companies that can take you to your destination.
There is a traffic jam on the freeway here
As the ADAC reports, there is a risk of long traffic jams in the metropolitan areas of Hamburg, Berlin, Stuttgart, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich on the Pentecost weekend. This also applies to the trunk roads to the North Sea and Baltic Sea and on the following routes:
- A1 Cologne – Dortmund – Bremen – Lübeck
- A2 Dortmund – Hanover – Berlin
- A1/A3/A4 Cologne Ring
- A3 Oberhausen – Frankfurt – Nuremberg – Passau
- A4 Kirchheim triangle – Erfurt – Dresden
- A5 Hattenbacher Dreieck – Frankfurt – Karlsruhe – Basel
- A6 Kaiserslautern – Mannheim – Heilbronn – Nuremberg
- A7 Hamburg-Flensburg
- A7 Hamburg – Hanover – Würzburg – Füssen/Reutte
- A8 Karlsruhe – Stuttgart – Munich – Salzburg
- A9 Munich – Nuremberg – Berlin
- A10 Berlin Ring
- A11 Berliner Ring – Uckermark triangle
- A19 Triangle Wittstock/Dosse – Rostock
- A24 Berlin – Wittstock/Dosse triangle
- A61 Mönchengladbach – Koblenz – Ludwigshafen
- A81 Stuttgart – singing
- A93 Inntal triangle – Kufstein
- A95 / B2 Munich – Garmisch-Partenkirchen
- A99 Bypass Munich
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