Tens of thousands of passengers headed home for their Christmas holidays on Saturday after three days of chaos at British airports caused by fog.

By mid-afternoon the fog had largely lifted. British Airways, which has suffered the bulk of the cancellations, resumed all domestic flights from London's Heathrow airport at midday.

BA said it hoped to run 95 percent of services on Saturday and a full service on Sunday, Christmas Eve.

"The weather certainly has cleared up. There have been only about 74 cancellations at the moment," a spokesman for airports operator BAA said.

On Thursday, 350 flights were canceled and a similar number were stopped on Friday, said BAA which runs Heathrow and six other British airports.

There are some 1,300 departures and arrivals a day from Heathrow, one of the world's busiest international airports. The airline said it used bigger planes to help ease the backlog.

BAA said there was now little backlog because airlines had laid on buses for domestic travelers, and other passengers had sorted out alternative travel plans.

"Our main trouble now is people turning up many hours early for their flights. We are putting them in marquees, with hot and cold drinks and food and even Santa is visiting them," the BAA spokesman said.

No problems were reported at the capital's other two major airports, Gatwick and Stansted.

The fog chaos and loss of revenue from hundreds of canceled flights is expected to cost BA millions of pounds.

BA published quarterly earnings last month which showed it cost the airline 100 million pounds ($196 million) after security was tightened in the wake of what police said in August was a plot to blow up airliners.

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