Cancelled flights and rescuing passengers stranded by the volcanic ash that closed UK airspace for six days cost Jet2.com owners Dart Group nearly £3m, it has revealed.

The aviation and distribution group said more than 400 flights had been cancelled due to the ban on commercial flights imposed because of ash from the erupting Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajoekull.

The disruption had cost around £350,000 a day, but Dart said it had sufficient financial resources to withstand a considerable period of disruption to Jet2.com’s flying programme.

Meanwhile, the sudden lifting of the flight ban by the Civil Aviation Authority came just in time to raise hopes that a major conference for top executives of digital TV technology group Pace plc will go ahead next week.

The Saltaire-based company is also hoping that resumed flights will enable 45 of its executives stranded as far afield as China and Brazil will be able to get home soon.

The world’s second-largest set-top box maker sells its products to customers in 120 countries around the globe. Its next twice-yearly gathering of 60 top executives was in danger of being cancelled due to the flight ban, but a company spokesman said Pace was now hoping it could go ahead.

Dart Group said the aviation chaos had dented profits by £2.8m. Its airline subsidiary Jet2.com, based at Leeds-Bradford Airport, had hired 90 coaches to rescue stranded passengers from a range of European destinations.

In a trading update it reported “satisfactory” trading for the year ended March 31, and the board expects the full-year results in June to be in line with market expectations.

In the year to March 31, 2009, Dart reported pre-tax profits of £33.5m.

Summer bookings at Jet2.com were higher than last year and ahead of market expectations. The airline had benefited from a continued cautious approach to its scheduled flying, supplemented by its charter trading performance. Another Boeing 757-200 aircraft had been bought in January to support expansion into East Midlands airport.

Fowler Welch-Coolchain, the distribution and logistics business, continued to perform in line with expectations and was doubling the size of its national distribution centre to more than one million sq ft through buying a 55,000-pallet capacity warehouse at Heywood, near Manchester.