Thousands of people were left stranded in terminals at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport for up to seven days.

“We are doing everything we can to help bring stranded pilgrims back home as quickly as possible after this unprecedented situation,” said BA employee Paolo De Renzis.

He added that BA was planning extra flights from a variety of destinations and they hoped to introduce additional capacity into its schedule where needed as part of a larger plan to transport passengers stranded all over the world.

“Our absolute priority is to get as many customers back home as soon as we can,” he said.

The airline will be increasing capacity on flights to London Heathrow on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday this week in a bid to clear the backlog of Umrah pilgrims who are still grounded.

A spokesman for BA said that the Boeing 767 that normally services the Jeddah route had 189 seats.

“The one with a different configuration that will operate four days this week has 246 seats -that is 32 business and 214 economy — 57 seats extra per flight.”

This amounts to an extra 228 seats a week. UK airspace was closed for six days following the eruption.

BA is also advising customers to register using a form on ba.com to accelerate the process of rebooking their flights, as it would help the airline identify where extra capacity is needed.