Three Royal Navy ships will be drafted to help return Britons stranded abroad as UK airspace remains restricted.

The move was announced after the UK’s emergency committee Cobra met to discuss options in addressing travel chaos caused by a volcanic ash cloud.

The ships HMS Ark Royal, HMS Ocean and HMS Albion are heading for Spain and unspecified Channel ports.
On Monday morning, flight restrictions were extended by air traffic control service Nats to 0100 BST Tuesday.
Planes were first grounded in the UK at midday on Thursday amid fears particles in the ash cloud from Eyjafjallajoekull could cause engines to shut down.

Travel agents’ association Abta said its “rough estimate” was that 150,000 Britons are currently stranded abroad, and rail and ferry services have been stretched to the limit by passengers seeking other means to return.

Following the Cobra meeting, the prime minister said he had held discussions with Spanish premier Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero about using Madrid as a hub to help stranded British travellers, in particular for flights arriving from Africa and Asia.

He added that the Navy ships would soon be deployed towards Channel ports for the effort.
“I believe this is one of the most serious transport disruptions we have faced,” Mr Brown said.

“It’s got financial consequences as well as human consequences and we will do everything in our power to make sure all the arrangements are in place to help people where possible to get back home.”
HMS Albion was deployed to Spain to return members of the 3 Rifles regiment to the UK, as they remain stranded on their way back from Afghanistan.

The move comes as schools are drawing up contingency plans to deal with the absence of teachers stranded by the crisis. A handful of schools have remained closed.

Early reports from Iceland on Monday have suggested the ash column rising from the volcano has reduced since the weekend.

David Rothery of the Open University said that although the ash and wind conditions at the volcanic vent were not necessarily stable, “there are grounds for cautious optimism”.
Clouded economics

EU transport ministers are also expected to hold emergency talks by video conference on how to ease the chaos caused by the volcanic ash cloud that has paralysed air travel across Europe.

The talks come as airports and airlines have called for flight restrictions – said to be costing airlines $200m (£130m) a day – to be reviewed.

British commercial pilots’ union Balpa said the industry will need the same of kind of government rescue following the eruption as some banks have had, with a number of airlines “staring bankruptcy in the face”.
Tim Jeans, managing director of the airline Monarch, said that “clearly you cannot sell a ticket for somebody from say Alicante to London for £60 and pick up a £2,000 bill”.

“No business could stand that and the UK airline industry is no different.”

The Conservatives said they would like to see ships chartered to bring people home who are stranded in Europe and urged ferry and rail operators to retain their normal pricing structures.

Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Norman Baker said it needed to be “urgently assessed” how much longer British passengers faced being stranded for.

A number of airlines, including BA, have said they have carried out test flights within restricted zones with no obvious damage to aircraft.

On Sunday, a British Airways Boeing 747 completed a two-and-three-quarter hour test flight at 40,000ft from Heathrow to Cardiff, via the Atlantic, the airline said.

Chief executive Willie Walsh, who is a trained pilot, and four crew were on board.

“The conditions were perfect and the aircraft encountered no difficulties. It will now undergo a full technical analysis at British Airways’ engineering base at Cardiff,” the airline said in a statement.

However, BBC business editor Robert Peston said a Met Office plane had encountered dangerous levels of ash when it went through the ash cloud on Sunday.

Dr Guy Gratton, head of the Facility of Airborne Atmospheric Measurement, a joint body belonging to the Met Office and the Natural Environment Research Council, said the test had discovered “a very complex set of ash plumes” with “six distinct layers”.

“Those layers are around four or five times more dense than we saw on our last flight on Friday, so it’s still quite a complex mixture of clear air and very worrying, but invisible volcanic ash at all sorts of heights,” he said.

Our correspondent said this showed the issue was not whether the cloud was real and dangerous, but whether its extent could be accurately mapped.

One possible solution would involve putting observation planes in the sky to give a more detailed picture of the location of ash concentrations, he added.

The government is trying to obtain more observation planes – from the military in particular – with this in mind, he said.