The Boeing 747 carrying 50 tonnes of supplies left at about 8.30am on Saturday crewed by a team of 30 volunteer BA pilots, cabin crew, engineers and ground staff.

The flight, with 10 tonnes of Oxfam cargo, will stop en route at Billund in Denmark to pick up 40 tonnes of aid from Unicef, BA's charity partner.

It is expected to land in the Dominican Republic at about midnight GMT.

A BA spokesman said seats had been removed from economy class to make room for the cargo, which includes containers of water, purification equipment and pumps. As well as funding the £250,000 cost of the flight, BA has pledged £300,000 from its Unicef Change for Good programme.

Earlier, a two-year-old girl was rescued from a collapsed building in Haiti by British firefighters. The young girl was trapped under piles of rubble in the capital Port-au-Prince and was rescued on the first full day of deployment for the 64-strong team following the devastating earthquake.

Meanwhile, relatives of a British woman missing in disaster-struck Haiti said they fear the worst as rescuers desperately search for survivors among the rubble.

United Nations worker Ann Barnes, 59, has been unaccounted for since the building she was in collapsed during Tuesday's devastating earthquake which has left as many as 50,000 dead.

The Red Cross estimated the death toll was between 45,000 and 50,000 but it is feared millions more have been injured, orphaned or made homeless.

Aid workers reported seeing piles of bodies in the streets and children sleeping among the dead, while the grief-stricken try to dig their relatives from the rubble with their bare hands.