Friday saw enormous disruption on the railways after a series of arson attacks on France’s key high-speed rail lines – find the latest here.

SNCF said that the travel plans of at least 800,000 passengers have been disrupted on Friday alone, while the transport minister announced that up to 50 percent of services on affected lines would have to be cancelled.

A quarter of Eurostar services between Paris and London were cancelled on Friday.

And the disruption is set to continue over the weekend – the arson attacks involved setting fire to “conduits carrying multiple (fibre-optic) cables” that relay “safety information for drivers” or control the motors for points that change rails.

SNCF’s CEO said: “There’s a huge number of bundled cables. We have to repair them one by one, it’s a manual operation” requiring “hundreds of workers”.

Attaque massive visant la SNCF : un incendie volontaire sur une "artère de câbles" à Vandières paralyse le trafic des TGV Est
➡️ https://t.co/Dh5YQ9FEgB pic.twitter.com/KtDZoZEDCi

— France Bleu (@francebleu) July 26, 2024

SNCF says services are expected to return to normal by Monday on most lines, but disruption will continue over the weekend.

Anyone planning to travel should check the latest on the SNCF information site here, or download the SNCF Connect app.

On Friday two in three trains were being cancelled on certain lines, and cancellations are likely to continue over the weekend. Services could also be rescheduled or delayed.

The disruption is mostly affecting the high-speed TGV routes in and out of Paris. Local lines are not directly affected but may suffer knock-on disruption.

West and south-west France – this is the most severely affected with no trains out of Gare Montparnasse at all on Friday morning.

Services restarted in the afternoon but only with around a third of the normal trains. Cancellations will continue but at least some services will run on this route over the weekend – although passengers who can postpone their journey are advised to do so. Those services that do run are expected to be very busy.

This affects services to the south-west including Bordeaux and Toulouse, and also the west including Brittany and Normandy lines.

East – trains between Paris and Lille and Paris and Arras are severely disrupted, including the Eurostar which uses the Paris-Lille high-speed tracks.

There are fewer cancellations on this line as trains are being diverted onto the slower local lines, although this is extending journey times by around two hours. On Friday a quarter of Eurostar services between London and Paris were cancelled.

South-east – the TGV Sud-Est axis, running between Paris and Lyon and onwards to Switzerland and Italy was not affected by the sabotage as an arson attack in this area was foiled. Services are running largely as normal with some knock-on disruption.

READ ALSO ‘Sabotage’ on French rail network before Olympics: What we know

Paris public transport is not affected by the sabotage although some services in the city centre are closed or diverted due to Olympics security protocols – more details here.

Roads

Sadly, things might not be much better on France’s roads this weekend – and the rail disruption seems certain only to make an already difficult travel weekend even worse. The French ride-share app BlaBlaCar said it had seen an 88 percent increase in bookings on Friday as people scrambled for an alternative to the train.

This weekend is France’s traditional ‘cross-over’ weekend for 2024. The chassé-croisé happens each year during the final weekend in July, is the annual moment when July holidaymakers start to return home while the August holidaymakers head off for their big summer getaways.

France’s traffic watchdog, Bison Futé, predicted that traffic will be heavy on Friday, with extremely difficult traffic conditions on the roads on Saturday, while Sunday will be slightly calmer.

READ ALSO Traffic: What to expect during the 2024 ‘chassé-croisé’ weekend in France 

Airports

The worst of the global IT outage appears to be over, but no one’s even going to attempt to deny that French airports are very busy at this time of year – it’s the world’s most popular tourist destination at the most popular tourist time of the year.

And airports in the Paris region, in particular, are gearing up for an especially busy period, with thousands of Olympic Games fans expected over the next couple of weeks.

From 6.30pm until 12 midnight (CET) on Friday, July 26th, a no-fly zone will be in place within a 150km radius of the French capital for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games.

This will mean flights will be interrupted at Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle (CDG), Orly airports, and Beauvais airports – this should have little effect on travel plans as airlines have adapted their schedules, having been notified of the no-fly security perimeter in 2023.

Flight resume as normal at 00.01am on Saturday and there are no expected disruptions over the weekend.