Questions & Answers
1. Why did the incidents occur in December?
2. Was passenger safety compromised?
3. Why didn't you have enough provisions on board?
4. Why did it take so long to rescue the Eurostar travellers?
5. Why was the customer communication on board so poor?
6. Did the ASLEF strike have an effect on the recovery process?
7. What compensation are travellers entitled to?
8. How do customers claim compensation?
9. How much are you spending on your improvements?
10. How quickly are you going to implement the changes?
11. What's the feasibility study that you're doing?
1. Why did the incidents occur in December?
On Friday 18 December, five Eurostar trains broke down in the Channel Tunnel. This was an unprecedented situation which we had never experienced before.
The breakdowns were due to extreme weather in Northern France, particularly in the Calais area, which resulted in snow getting into the power cars, causing condensation to build up onto electronic equipment.
We recognise that because of these breakdowns and the subsequent delays, our passengers had a very uncomfortable and distressing experience. We fully accept that the handling of the disruption was unacceptable and are very sorry for the inconvenience and discomfort that we caused to our travellers.
2. Was passenger safety compromised?
No, not at all.
We recognise that passengers suffered a lot of discomfort and that it was very distressing. However, at no point in time was passenger safety at risk.
What happened was unacceptable and we are very sorry but as the Independent Review confirms, no-one was at risk.
3. Why didn't you have enough provisions on board?
Although we had contingency provision in place, with the scale of the disruption, these were not sufficient.
Following the disruptions, we significantly increased our stock levels of provisions on board every train.
4. Why did it take so long to rescue the Eurostar travellers?
We know the evacuation took a long time and are very sorry for the discomfort that was caused to passengers.
We are now focused on reviewing procedures and taking action to make sure this can never happen again.
We are also working with Eurotunnel to invest in additional rescue locomotives that we will have on standby for disrupted situations.
5. Why was the customer communication on board so poor?
We recognise that we did not provide enough information to our passengers and we are making major improvements to our communications during disruption.
- We will be working with Eurotunnel to improve communications and this includes investing in a state-of-the-art tunnel communications system.
- Train managers and drivers will have smart phones so they have access to the latest information to communicate to passengers.
- We have already improved our communications so that we provide regular real time information to our customers through our website, email, facebook, twitter and SMS.
- We have developed a new call-out system so that we have enough staff available to help passengers in the stations when services are disrupted.
6. Did the ASLEF strike have an effect on the recovery process?
No. The ASLEF strike had no impact on our services or the recovery process.
7. What compensation are travellers entitled to?
Eurostar offered enhanced compensation to travellers on the delayed services on Friday 18 December and Saturday 19 December, as follows:
- Full refund of the journey
- Additional free return journey on Eurostar in the next 12 months
- £150 / €170 in cash
- And any reasonable out-of-pocket expenses (covering for example hotel accommodation, meals, LUL/metro tickets etc…)
For travellers who were due to travel on Saturday 19 December to Wednesday 24 December and did not travel due to the disruptions, exchanges or refunds have been offered.
For more information, please click here
8. How do customers claim compensation?
Affected travellers have been asked to write to our Traveller Care department.
Traveller Care
2nd Floor, Kent House
81 Station Road
Ashford
Kent
TN23 1AP
When writing to Traveller Care, passengers should provide their booking reference number, original receipts, full contact details and bank details.
We are doing our very best to deal with a very large number of compensation requests following the disruptions to our services in December.
We are responding to requests in the order in which they were received and by date of incident. Customers will normally receive a response within four to six weeks. As of 9 February, we are currently responding to requests received on 12 January. However, a small number of requests received before this date are still being processed.
For more information, please click here
9. How much are you spending on your improvements?
We will be investing over £30 million to improve the resilience of our trains in severe weather as well as our passenger care and communications in times of disruption. Of the £30 million, £12 million had already been earmarked for some time for a new channel tunnel communication system. But the additional funding is new investment.
10. How quickly are you going to implement the changes?
Following the disruption in December, we immediately introduced the following improvements:
- We have strengthened our communication processes to ensure we provide better real-time information and advice as soon as disruption occurs via the website, email and twitter.
- We have implemented a new call-out system so we have enough staff on hand to help out in stations when services are disrupted.
- We have significantly increased our stock levels of provisions on board every train.
- We have developed a 'special timetable' which we operate in extreme weather conditions and publish in advance.
- When the weather conditions are severe we have engineers checking our trains before they enter the tunnel.
- We also impose more speed restrictions on the high speed lines. Whilst this causes a slight delay to the journey we believe it is an important precautionary measure during winter weather.
11. What's the feasibility study that you're doing?
To ensure that we fully identify all of the necessary modifications going forward we will establish a dedicated technical group comprised of engineering specialists from Alstom, Eurostar and SNCF. This group will carry out an in-depth feasibility study, consulting with other railway companies operating in difficult weather conditions. The solutions recommended by this review will then be carried out as part of the mid-life overhaul of our trains.
