The race to bring stranded Britons back home gathered pace today after the UK’s skies reopened amid a continuing row over flying restrictions caused by the volcanic ash cloud.

Airlines rushed to reschedule flights but there were warnings it could be weeks before services returned to normal.

The Civil Aviation Authority stepped in to ease restrictions last night and described the chaos as a “a situation without precedent”.

It is estimated hundreds of thousands of passengers were left stranded abroad in a shutdown thought to have cost the industry about £130 million a day.

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Birmingham International Airport is now fully open. A spokeswoman said: “We have had around 70 cancellations already today but things are expected to pick up this morning. There have been three departures and two arrivals so far.”

Among the early arrivals at Birmingham were Robert Williams and Marjorie Hammond, from Coreley, Ludlow.

They had expected their flight out of the UK to be cancelled, but checked Teletext to discover they would be able to jet off on holiday.

Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways, said “lessons can be learned” from the handling of the event, and air traffic control company Nats insisted it faced no political pressure to ease the restrictions.

A spokesman for BAA, which operates airports including Heathrow, said it would do everything possible to “get people moving”.

Transport Secretary Lord Adonis said there was now a “better” understanding of the effects of volcanic ash on aircraft.

“The CAA have 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,” he said.

Gordon Brown today defended the time taken to reopen UK airspace stressing that passengers had to be “safe and secure”.The Prime Minister said the Government would “never be forgiven” if aircraft had been allowed to fly when people’s lives were at risk.