After a week at a standstill, Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport is back in operation today with the first incoming flight landing.

As the militants from the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) brought their crippling seven-day siege of Bangkok's airports to an end and began their exodus, the international airport opened early this morning and the first flight arrived from Phuket, in Southern Thailand.

Around 240,000 foreign tourists, including several thousand Britons, are still stranded in Thailand. The first of the Britons to leave the country from Suvarnabhumi are expected to be flown out at midnight tomorrow.

Vudhibhandu Vichairatana, the chairman of Airports of Thailand (AOT), told The Times the first international departure would in all likelihood be a Thai Airlines flight to Rome.

As Chavarat Charnvirakul, the acting Prime Minister, announced that parliament would vote for a new Prime Minister on Monday, the PAD protesters who have held the country to ransom for the last week mopped up their mess at Suvarnabhumi and streamed away in cars, buses and lorries loaded with their belongings.

As they left, they passed officials from Thai Airlines and AOT assessing the damage of the week long siege.

"We had security staff coming in last night to inspect, and they will be here again today," Mr Vudhibhandhu said as he walked through the airport. "Mechanical engineers and technical staff will be conducting assessments," he said.

Around him, squads of cleaners armed with brooms swarmed through the airport.

The siege, which severed Bangkok's air links with the world, has devastated the country's tourist industry and crippled the economy. It was expected that over one million jobs would be lost if it continued.

It represented a successful, last-ditch, bid by PAD militants to oust Somchai Wongsawat, the Prime Minister, who they accused of being a proxy for the corrupt Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a coup in 2006.

Their six month long battle to topple Mr Somchai's government ended yesterday when the highest court in the land forced him from power.

His government was dissolved, and he and other leaders of the People's Power Party (PPP) were barred from politics for five years after the Constitutional Court found a member of the PPP guilty of electoral fraud in 2007.

It has been replaced by a shell party made up of most of the PPP members - a fact that might throw the country back into political chaos.

PAD has warned that, if the new government is made up of its former, pro-Thaksin politicians, it would be back on the streets again.

"I'm happy because the government was no good, the government has gone, and we have won," said Sarakorn Ingkapiankun, a PAD member.

"I hope the new government will be better. Our victory is not a total victory, it's step by step," warned Mr Sarakorn as he queued for a lorry out of the airport.

As Mr Sarakorn and his comrades packed their gear to leave the airport, Henry Shearer was on a bus on his way to Phuket – his first chance to leave the country since Saturday.

Mr Shearer, a 27-year-old chartered surveyor from London, and his girlfriend Gemma Radcliffe, a physiotherapist, have been stranded in Thailand since the weekend have spent the last few days trying to find a way out. "At least we're heading in the right direction," he said.

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