Air passengers whose travel plans were thrown into chaos breathed a sigh of relief as several more Gulf Air flights resumed operations between Bahrain and London.

GF007, which departed Bahrain late on Monday arrived early yesterday, and GF003 departed yesterday evening as weather conditions improved in the UK.

Another Gulf Air flight (GF002) from Heathrow arrived last night and GF006 was set to arrive this morning after a late night departure.

An airline spokesman said flights were expected to return to normal in the next 48 hours, with the weather continuing to improve and Heathrow gradually increasing the number of flights taking off and landing.

'We have a backlog of passengers which will be cleared in the next two to three days since we will be operating higher capacity aircraft, carrying more passengers, on this route,' he said.

The spokesman said since operations were also disrupted at Frankfurt due to severe weather, a Gulf Air flight from Bahrain (GF017), which was due to land there yesterday morning, was diverted to Munich.

'That flight will go to Frankfurt when the weather improves,' he said.

The spokesman said GF016, which was to have departed Germany to Bahrain yesterday, would now leave today.

However, Lufthansa cancelled its sole flight from Bahrain to Frankfurt yesterday and British Airways its Bahrain to London service last night.

'Severe weather continues to cause significant disruption to our operations,' said a BA spokeswoman.

'Currently Heathrow has only one of its two runways operational and many areas of the airfield remain unusable including areas around parked aircraft.

Capacity

'The airport owner, BAA, is continuing to clear large amounts of snow and ice from the airfield but based on current icy conditions and forecast of further bad weather, we expect this process to take some time.

'The airport is therefore likely to be operating at significantly reduced capacity for several days.

'We are adjusting our schedule to fit with the capacity of the airport for both departures and arrivals.

'We are planning to operate as many long-haul flights as possible, but there will be some cancellations due to the difficult conditions at the airport.'

The spokeswoman urged customers not to travel to the airport unless they had a confirmed booking on one of the flights that was operating.

BA is now encouraging London-bound passengers whose travel is not essential to cancel their trip in return for a full refund or consider postponing it to another date within the next 12 months.-TradeArabia News Service