By Alastair Jamieson, Aislinn Laing, Laura Roberts and David Millward
Published: 9:15AM BST 21 Apr 2010
Thousands of passengers rushed to terminals as news spread that the blanket ban, imposed following safety fears over a cloud of volcanic ash, was lifted from 10pm on Tuesday.
However, despite a handful of arrivals at Heathrow late last night, most flights remain cancelled until this afternoon as airlines attempt to return to a normal schedule, with many aircraft and crews still returning from foreign airports.
All Ryanair flights from Stansted are cancelled today, and EasyJet said the disruption could last for several days.
At Heathrow's Terminal 3, passengers hoping to fly out were forced to wait in queues outside the airport building, marshalled by uniformed staff from the airport operators BAA and individual airlines. Many had been there since the early hours of the morning and had wrapped themselves in sleeping bags, blankets and scarves to cope with the cold conditions.
Although the majority were in good spirits, there were some angry outbreaks and one woman was said to have collapsed in the queue.
Birmingham Airport pleaded with passengers not to turn up before checking with their airline. A spokeswoman said there had been a handful of flights but more than 70 cancellations.
"The advice for passengers who are expecting to travel today is to check with their airline," she said. "I cannot stress that strongly enough."
British Airways said disruption could continue for "weeks" and it could take a similar amount of time to repatriate the estimated 150,000 Britons still stranded abroad.
Airspace over parts of Germany and Scandinavia remains closed until at least midday, but the rest of Europe is also now returning to normal.
A statement on the BA website said the airline was "looking to" operate all long haul flights departing from Heathrow and Gatwick today.
However, around half of its early long-haul departures from Heathrow were cancelled this morning, including BA flights to Miami, New York and Washington. Almost all short-haul departures are already cancelled until early this afternoon.
Heathrow's first departure for six days did not take place until after 8am – some two and a half hours after normal – until 8.06am when an Alitalia flight left for Rome.
Twenty-two British Airways flights arrived between midnight and 8am along with one Iberia flight, one Qatar Airlines flight, one Delta flight and one Gulf Air flight.
Between around 7am and 10am, around seven flights departed or were due to depart and 17 were scheduled from a total of more than 200.
One passenger at Terminal 3, Ron Rowe, 59, from Caterham in Surrey, was hoping to fly to Istanbul for a holiday with his wife.
"We were due to fly this morning but it looks like it's now cancelled," he said. "We've been standing here for hours and they just keep asking us what airline we're travelling with and whether they told us to come to the airport."
"We couldn't get hold of our airline, Turkish Airlines, but the website said the flight was confirmed so we came to the airport and now they're refusing to let us in – they say it's for health and safety reasons but it's empty in there and it's freezing out here and they're making us stand for hours. What about our health and safety? There's a mother with a young baby who's been here for hours and one woman's just collapsed. It's appalling."
Olivia Thompson, 26, a teacher, and Camilla Ayling, 27, a speech therapist, both Australians living in Fulham, West London, were hoping to travel to Anzac Day celebrations in Istanbul on the same Turkish Airlines flight but on arriving at the airport, found their flight was cancelled.
They sat on the floor outside the airport swaddled in sleeping bags eating Vegemite sandwiches. "We've been here since 2am – they told us to come but now are refusing to even speak to us or even put us on standby for another flight," Miss Thompson said. "They just keep telling us to speak to our travel agent but we booked our flight online. We're not really sure what else we're supposed to have done."
Peter and Jackie Thomkins, from Loughborough in Leicestershire, were due to fly to Toronto with Air Canada and left for the airport when they were told their flight was scheduled but arrived to find it was cancelled. "We thought it might be cancelled but we felt we still had to go through the motions," Mr Tomkins said. "We've kept up our end of the bargain so hopefully they'll keep up theirs and get us there at some stage."
The arrivals hall of Terminal 3 resembled a campsite, with passengers in transit setting up makeshift beds with donated yoga mats and blankets. Some have been sleeping in the terminal for six days since the Icelandic volcano eruption left them stranded and have become friends, singing the Phil Collins ballad "One More Night" and joking about the delays.
At Gatwick, long queues snaked through the terminals as passengers arrived more than four hours early to check in for flights.
The airport is expecting 714 flights to take off and arrive today, carrying around 75,000 passengers, compared to a normal full day which would see 900 flights.
A spokeswoman said: "At the moment we are open and fully operational and operating with no delays but we advise passengers to confirm flights before coming to the airport. There might be cancellations throughout the day. It is a dynamic situation."
The no-fly zone was lifted after six days without flights, which have cost the economy more than £1.6 billion, left 500,000 passengers stranded and disrupted schools.
The decision was made after ministers were put under pressure to explain why British flights were being stopped while most of European air space was open, despite the cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland. After a meeting between the Civil Aviation Authority, Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, and airlines it was agreed to open most British air space, including all airports, from 10pm on Tuesday.
Lord Adonis said: “Safety remains my paramount concern. Since the flight restrictions were imposed, the Civil Aviation Authority has been working around the clock with the aircraft manufacturing industry, the airlines and the research community to better understand how different concentrations of ash affect aircraft engines. As a result, the Civil Aviation Authority has now established a wider area in which it is safe to fly, consistent with the framework agreed by the EU transport ministers.”
He later insisted the government was not forced to reopen UK skies by "pressure" from airlines, saying "continuous assessments" had been made throughout the shutdown caused by the volcanic ash cloud.
He told GMTV: "At every stage decisions were based on the decisions of safety regulators. They have not been based on pressure from airlines, and that is what the public would expect."
The first passengers to emerge in the arrivals hall at Heathrow's Terminal Five at about 10pm last night were on a BA flight from Vancouver, Canada, which had first been expected to divert to an airport in Scotland or northern England.
The passengers only discovered they would be landing in London when they were about an hour away, having circled over Shannon airport in Ireland.
Neil Rodgers, the first passenger through the doors, said: "It's good to be back."
Television presenter Laurence Llewelyn Bowen was among air passengers describing their relief to be home, arriving on a BA flight from Mauritius where he spent two weeks on holiday with his wife and three daughters.
Arriving at Terminal Five, he said: "There was a lot of very un-British clapping and cheering when the plane actually landed.
"We didn't know until about 20 minutes to go that we were actually going to land at Heathrow."
He said the experience was a reminder that plane travel was a "privilege".
"We are so used to this idea of knowing exactly what's going on and being in control of stuff. We are used to the idea of getting on a plane and going anywhere you want at the drop of a hat."
Other passengers were jubilant to have made the journey, with one Canadian flyer saying that managing to get hold of a boarding pass felt like "winning a golden ticket for Willy Wonka's chocolate factory".
Andrew Haines, chief executive of the CAA, insisted the aviation regulator had not been "bullied" by airlines into revising safety guidelines so that air space could be reopened.
He told GMTV: "The airlines know that their safety record is a fundamental linchpin of their operation. The UK has one of the finest safety records in the world and there was no way they were going to compromise that and there was no way we would have allowed it."
However, Willie Walsh, the British Airways chief executive, said: “I do not believe it was necessary to impose a blanket ban on all UK air space last Thursday."
Airlines and airport operators said the CAA and Nats, the air traffic control centre, had “overreacted” to the crisis caused by the ash cloud over Europe and the Atlantic.
David Henderson, of the Association of European Airlines, said Britain had taken a stricter approach than other parts of Europe.
“We had hoped there would be genuine co-ordination across Europe,” he said. “We are disappointed that this has not happened.
“There are probably 100 to 150 airlines in Europe, some large, some small, some tiny and some that are not going to be around in a week or two, that’s for sure.”
David Johnston, managing director of Stansted Airport, said he expected a "post-mortem" after which lessons would be learned.
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, questioned the science behind the lockdown.
“What I would really like to know is whether we are absolutely certain that the initial decision taken to close down UK aviation at this level of risk was correct,” he said.
A new chart, released by Eurocontrol in a PDF file, shows the area affected by ash that is still too dense to be safe for aviation.
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