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06 April 2011 09:35
Black smoke rises from a burning building in Tokyo after Japan was struck by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake on Friday
Flights from the UK to Tokyo have been cancelled following the devastating earthquake in Japan.
A British Airways plane scheduled to fly to Tokyo's Hareda Airport on Friday had pushed back off the stand at Heathrow when the airline decided not to make the journey.
BA and Virgin Airlines both cancelled daily flights from Heathrow to Tokyo's Narita airport.
While many travel insurance policies make allowances for unexpected flight cancellations due to natural disasters, passengers returning to the UK on Friday were spared having to claim for the cost of a new flight.
BA said its flights from Hareda and Narita were due to land safely back in London on Friday, having left before the earthquake struck.
A Virgin spokeswoman said: "Narita is about one hour from central Tokyo and we've cancelled our flight VS900 and the return flight VS901 today.
"We do have a flight from Tokyo that left before the earthquake and that will arrive back this evening."
A BA spokesman said: "We decided that we would not operate the Hareda-bound flight (BA007) as a precaution and have also cancelled our flight to Narita."
There are fears that the tsunami could reach as far as Australia, Mexico and Hawaii. Both BA and Virgin said they were closely monitoring the situation.
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