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An Air New Zealand plane was due to take off from Los Angeles to London at 11.30am today, breaking six days of disruption, the airline announced this morning.

Britain's airports reopened this morning, after days of air travel chaos caused by ash cloud from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

Air New Zealand said its 9.30pm and 11.15pm flights from Auckland to London were expected to fly through to Britain, while its first flight out of London was set to leave tomorrow at 3.15am NZT (4.15pm Wednesday UK time).

The airline has also scheduled an additional flight to leave Hong Kong at 12.30pm NZT today for London.

"Air New Zealand would like to reiterate that conditions in the UK/Europe remain very changeable and services could be delayed or disrupted at any point," it said in a statement at 11.10am.

Normal services would recommence from tomorrow, with the airline looking to add extra flights between London and Auckland where possible.

Passengers stranded in Hong Kong and Los Angeles on their way to London would be given first priority, followed by those with existing bookings on scheduled services, and then passengers in a chronological order from their original point of delay.

Britain's Transport Secretary announced that airports would resume services at 10pm on Tuesday (9am this morning NZT) after talks with air safety regulators overnight (NZT).

Many European flights earlier took to the skies.

Cheers and applause broke out as flights took off from Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport, Amsterdam and elsewhere.

Chris James, arriving at Heathrow from Mauritius, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that passengers on his flight didn't know they would land in London until 45 minutes before their plane touched down.

"Initially it was quite a stressful situation, we didn't know what was happening," James said.

However, Qantas flights to the UK and Europe will remain grounded until the airline is certain it can land its planes.

Emirates is also not accepting passengers on Australian flights bound for London or Frankfurt, but will fly to other European destinations.

Singapore Airlines plans to start flying from Australia to London with at least one flight expected to depart sometime on Wednesday evening.

Meanwhile, German airspace remained officially closed but 800 planes were allowed to land or take off, all flying at low altitude.

Scottish airports let in a handful of domestic flights, while Switzerland and northern Italy also opened their airspace. Some flights took off from Asia to southern Europe and came in from Cairo, where at least 17,000 people had been stranded.

Polish aviation authorities said they planned to reopen the country's airspace on Wednesday morning (Wednesday night NZT).

Backlog

The Eurocontrol air traffic agency in Brussels said it expected just under half of Europe's 27,500 flights to go ahead on Tuesday local time and close to normal takeoffs by Friday.

But with more than 95,000 flights cancelled in the last week alone, airlines faced the enormous task of working through the backlog to get passengers where they want to go.

Passengers with current tickets were being given priority - stranded passengers were being told to either pay for a new ticket, take the first available flight or to use their old ticket and wait for days, or weeks, for the first available seat.

"Once your flight's cancelled, you go to the back of the queue," said Laurie Price, director of aviation strategy at consultant Mott Macdonald, who was stranded in Halifax, Canada. "It seems intrinsically unfair."

Although seismic activity at the Eyjafjallajokull volcano has increased, the ash plume appears to be shrinking.

Tremors from the volcano, which geologists believe to be caused by magma rising through the crust, can also be heard and felt as far as 25 kilometres from the crater.

A Eurocontrol volcanic ash map listed the airspace between Iceland, Britain and Ireland as a no-fly zone, along with much of the area around the Baltic Sea.

The ash cloud also spread westward from Iceland, toward Greenland and Canada's eastern coastline.

- AP

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