Protesters have allowed flights to resume at Bangkok's international airport, after a Thai court stripped Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat of his post and outlawed the ruling party on Tuesday.
Protest leaders on Tuesday said they would allow passenger and cargo flights to leave and land at Suvarnabhumi international, lifting a week-long blockade that has stranded thousands of travellers, including Australians.
But the airport will remain closed to passenger flights until at least December 15 due to the disruption caused by the anti-government protesters, the Airports of Thailand said in a statement on Tuesday.
A court earlier Tuesday dissolved Thailand's top three ruling parties for electoral fraud and temporarily banned the prime minister from politics, bringing down a government that has faced months of strident protests seeking its ouster.
The Constitutional Court ruling set the stage for thousands of protesters to end their week-long siege of the country's two main airports, but also raised fears of retaliatory violence by a pro-government group that could sink the country deeper into crisis and cripple its economy.
Members of the People's Alliance for Democracy, occupying Suvarnabhumi airport, cheered and hugged after they heard news of the verdict.
Government spokesman Nattawut Sai-kau said Somchai and his six-party ruling coalition would step down.
"We will abide by the law. The coalition parties will meet together to plan for its next move soon," he told The Associated Press.
The anti-government Peoples Alliance for Democracy (PAD) began its occupation of the airports last week as part of ongoing civil disobedience action aimed at forcing Somchai to step down.
The PAD has accused Somchai of acting as a proxy for his brother-in-law, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who fled Thailand during a corruption court case.
Thaksin was later found guilty and sentenced to two years' jail.
The constitutional court on Tuesday found the leading coalition parties, including Somchai's People's Power Party or PPP, guilty of electoral breaches during the December 2007 vote.
Party executives face bans of five years from politics.
A PAD spokesman, Parnthep Pourpongpan, said the court verdict marked a victory and would lead to a review of the occupation at the airports.
"We have to consider about the victory today, then we will have a meeting to see what the new direction for us is at least," Parnthep told AAP.
"We expect, after the meeting, we will have some good news to review the level of the demonstration."
But senior PAD member Somkiat Pongpaiboon told reporters flights would be allowed in and out of the airport immediately, news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"As of this moment the PAD has allowed flights to take off and land immediately, both passenger and cargo flights," he told reporters.
Thailand's airport authority confirmed an agreement had been reached with the protesters, saying flights would resume if there were no technical problems and the airport had been fully checked over.
"They're (the protesters) going to leave now ... they told me, yes," Vudhihaandhu Vichairatama, chairman of the board of Airports of Thailand, told AFPTV.
"We have reached an agreement with PAD to start clearing protesters from the passenger zone to reopen Suvarnabhumi Airport," Vudhihaandhu told reporters at the airport earlier.
"But how soon depends on technical issues. If there is no technical problem the first flights would resume within 24 hours," he said.
However, senior airline officials said it could still take as a long as a week, while airport authorities and technicians review and check IT and security systems, before the main international airport of Suvanabhumi and the domestic terminal of Don Mueang were fully operational again.
Thailand's tourism industry has been crippled since the protests against the Somchai government occupied the airports last week.
The Australian Embassy in Bangkok set up a special unit to help stranded Australian travellers.
Some began returning from Thailand on Tuesday night, arriving at Perth International Airport on a Qantas flight from Singapore today, after Qantas organised a flight out of the tourist island of Phuket to the Asian city state.
In a statement on the embassy website, Qantas confirmed it would operate a second extra flight from Phuket to Singapore on Wednesday.
"These flights will carry Qantas/British Airways passengers and other Australians holding tickets from other airlines for the period of the disruption," the statement read.
A senior Thai Airways International executive, Pridi Boonsue, told AAP the carrier was currently operating daily flights from the Vietnam war era airport of Utapao to Sydney as well as a daily service to Perth from Phuket.
Pridi that said after the protesters left and the airport was cleared by the Airports Authority of Thailand "and declared operational Thai (Airways) would be able to resume some flights within six hours".
Officials say it could be up to one week before the Authority gives the all clear for passenger aircraft to resume normal flights at the international airport of Suvanabhumi.