Passengers arriving for the first European-bound flight from Bahrain in six days were yesterday told it would definitely depart for London, but was not guaranteed to get them there.

British Airways (BA) flight 124 took off from Bahrain International Airport en route to London Heathrow yesterday afternoon, but was forced to detour to Brussels, Belgium.

Speaking to our sister newspaper Gulf Daily News (GDN), one customer who declined the offer said he was told the flight could be detoured after checking in. 'I was originally due to travel in the early hours of the morning, but after phoning the BA hotline last night I was told that the flight had been pushed back to afternoon,' he said.

'I arrived at the airport at around 11am as I was advised by airline representatives and checked in as normal.

'Then I got talking to someone else in the queue and they mentioned something about the possibility of landing in Europe. I asked a BA official and he confirmed that the flight would take off at 2.30pm, but there was no guarantee we would make it to London.

'They cancelled my check-in, gave me a number to call to change my flight so I did that and the earliest date is May 2.'

Meanwhile, the scheduled Gulf Air flight to London due to leave at around the same time was delayed until late afternoon and eventually cancelled. A special flight was scheduled to leave for the British capital at 1.30am. The flight to Paris left on time in the afternoon.

One passenger described the last few days as a rollercoaster.

'We don't really know what's happening,' Martin Holland told the GDN early afternoon.

'I was in transit in Bahrain last Thursday on a flight from Oman when I first heard what had happened. It's been a bit of a roller-coaster in Bahrain over the last few days, to be honest.

'Although we've been paying for our food and accommodation, Gulf Air has been very good to be fair.'

Lufthansa and KLM flights to Frankfurt and Amsterdam, respectively, were expected to depart on schedule early this morning.

Experts have warned the fallout from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, in southeast Iceland, could take several days to clear after an eruption melted the 250-metre-thick glacier around it, causing severe floods.

The volcano began erupting last Wednesday for the second time in a month from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier.

It hurled a plume of ash six to 11km into the atmosphere before it spread southeast overnight - forcing airports to start cancelling flights and shutting down on Thursday.

Many airports across the continent opened to European traffic yesterday for the first time since the eruption. London's airports however remained shut until 1am, with forecasters predicting further delays if the dense ash cloud remained over much of the country.

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