* Aberdeen and Edinburgh airports open, Glasgow set to close again
* No flights from London airports before 7pm
* Met Office forecasts latest ash cloud will continue to disperse across England, Wales and Northern Ireland today
* Ministers consider night-flights to clear backlog once cloud clears
A new eruption from the Icelandic volcano today threw plans to get Britain flying again into chaos.
Passengers who were told flights would resume today had their hopes dashed after more cancellations were announced as a new ash cloud headed towards the country.
Passengers at Barajas Airport, Madrid, wait for news about flights back to Britain
The after-effects of the volcano eruption in southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier is likely to cause further chaos for a fortnight
Is it a bird or is it a plane? After five days of empty skies this Lufthansa passenger jet was spotted flying above London on its way from Germany to the U.S. It was given special permission by aviation authorities to fly above the ash cloud
A pilot gives the thumps up to as gets the go ahead to leave Belfast City Airport this morning. But the airport closed again at 1pm because of the ash cloud
First flight: A Flybe plane takes off from Glasgow for Stornoway at 7.15am today. However because of a new ash cloud drifting from Iceland overnight, the airport closed at 1pm
Flights later today will be limited to eastern Scotland as the volcanic ash cloud situation remains 'dynamic', air traffic control company Nats said.
All London airports remained closed today and there will be no flights before 7pm at the earliest in the rest of England, nor in Wales or Northern Ireland.
Nats said that from 1pm to 7pm only part of Scottish airspace, including Aberdeen, Inverness and Edinburgh airports, would be available for flights in addition to airspace south to Newcastle airport.
This will mean that there will be no flights after 1pm from Glasgow, which was among the airports that was able to open briefly this morning and operate limited services.
BA had intended to resume flights from London airports today but last night it had to cancel those plans.
Ministers are said to be considering relaxing night-flight restrictions around Heathrow, once planes can land there, and running a 24-hour operation to clear the backlog of stranded passengers.
Critics have said the closure of British airspace was unnecessarily triggered by the Met Office.
They say a scientific model based on ‘probability’ rather than fact was used by the government agency to forecast the spread of the volcanic ash cloud.
Matthias Ruete, the European Commission’s director general of transport, said air traffic authorities should not have imposed a widespread ban.
He suggested the ban should have been restricted to a 20 to 30 mile limit around the volcano in Iceland.
Newcastle Airport reopened for flights to and from Aberdeen and the Isle of Man at 7am. It also said easyJet was hoping to operate a 'very limited service' from late afternoon.
EasyJet said all its flights to and from northern Europe including the UK were cancelled until 5pm, but it would continue to operate routes in southern Europe.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said airports were 'taking advantage of the window of opportunity' as the impact of the volcano ash cloud temporarily lessened, but passenger safety would remain 'paramount'.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband advised stranded British travellers in Europe to head for Calais.
A spokesman for the air traffic control service Nats said: 'The volcano eruption in Iceland has strengthened and a new ash cloud is spreading south and east towards the UK.
'This demonstrates the dynamic and rapidly changing conditions in which we are working.
'Latest information from the Met Office shows that the situation is worsening in some areas.'
The first of three Royal Navy warships, meanwhile, today began rescuing Britons stranded by the air chaos.HMS Albion docked at Santander in northern Spain this morning and started loading about 500 troops and 300 civilians to take them back to the UK.
Another two Navy vessels, aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and commando helicopter carrier HMS Ocean, have also been deployed to rescue stranded British travellers from Europe. Government officials are due to announce where they will dock later today.
A brand new £500-million cruise ship, the Celebrity Eclipse, is due to leave Southampton tonight for Bilbao to pick up around 2,000 British tourists from the northern Spanish port.
The Met Office itself said strong high-altitude winds were blowing the new cloud towards the UK more quickly than the one which followed the first eruption.
A trickle of passengers arrived at airports in Scotland this morning as a handful of domestic flights resumed.
A meeting of the government's emergency planning committee Cobra, chaired by Gordon Brown, was held last night to discuss the latest updates on the ash. It will meet again today.
The results of 40 or so airline test flights at the weekend, including a British Airways flight on Sunday, suggested the risks were not as high as the computer models predicted.
None found evidence of any ash in engines, windows or lubrication systems.
Airlines are losing an estimated £130million a day in revenue because of the ban.
Giovanni Bisignani, head of the International Air Transport Association, said: 'The chaos, inconvenience and economic losses are not theoretical.
'They are enormous. We must make decisions based on the real situation in the sky, not on theoretical models.'
In a joint letter to Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, 11 British airlines said the official response to the eruption presented a 'clear case' for compensation from the Government and the EU.
BA alone estimates the crisis is costing it up to £20million a day.
Mr Brown announced yesterday that three Royal Navy ships - the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, HMS Ocean and HMS Albion - will join a Dunkirk-style rescue.
Albion was due to pick up some 300 troops, including men from 3rd Battalion The Rifles, returning after a gruelling six-month tour in Afghanistan, from the northern Spanish port of Santander.
Ark Royal and Ocean will use French Channel ports. It is likely people wanting to board will have to show a a British passport.
While the decision to call in the Navy was welcomed, there were questions over whether the ships should all have been sent to Spain and not France where ferry companies said they were coping with the massive demand.
Eurostar has put on at least an extra 28 trains and says it has 30,000 standard class one-way seats available from today at £89.
The Government is also discussing a plan to create an air hub in Madrid for flights from outside the ash zone.
Passengers would then be transported by road and rail to Calais and other French ports.
Even before the situation worsened last night, thousands of Britons stranded abroad had been told they could face two more weeks of chaos and uncertainty.
Tour operators and airlines said the backlog caused by the erupting volcano Eyjafjallokull is so great that it will take up to 14 days to clear.
British Airways said it had 80 aircraft and almost 3,000 cabin crew and pilots out of position across its global network.
Most airlines promised to prioritise those who had been waiting in airports around the world.
There were suggestions last night that some airlines might pay passengers who do not need to return urgently to wait for a later flight.
* Airlines have provoked fury with calls for the abolition of the regime that requires them to help passengers stranded by flight cancellations. EU rules state that where a flight is cancelled, the airline is required to provide hotel accommodation, meals and other essentials such as the cost of phone calls. But there are reports that many people have been left to fend for themselves. Michael O'Leary of Ryanair said it was 'nuts' to impose such a responsibility and a bill of possibly millions on airlines.
EUROPEAN AIRPORTS (as of 8am Tuesday)
AUSTRIA - Open.
BELGIUM - Airspace closed until Tuesday 0600 GMT. May then allow some planes to land and from 1200 GMT some to depart.
BULGARIA - Open
CZECH REPUBLIC - Open
DENMARK - Airspace above 20,500 feet open while the closure below that level is extended until at least 2400 GMT on Tuesday.
FINLAND - Airspace closed.
FRANCE - French airlines will try to resume 75 percent of long-haul flights from Paris and 25 percent of internal flights on Tuesday.
GERMANY - Airspace closed, with some exceptions, until at least 1200 GMT Tuesday.
HUNGARY - Open
IRELAND - Closed
ITALY - Airspace to reopen from 0600 GMT.
NETHERLANDS - Passenger flights left Amsterdam's Schipol Airport from 1800 GMT Monday.
NORWAY - Airspace partly closed.
POLAND - Closed.
ROMANIA - Open.
SPAIN - 17 airports open.
SWEDEN - Open
SWITZERLAND - Open
TURKEY - All airports open
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