Further tests are being carried out on London's millennium wheel, after plans to carry passengers on New Year's Eve were cancelled amid safety worries.

On Friday engineers checked each of the wheel's 32 passenger capsules to find out if they met safety standards.

The 450ft, £35m wheel - officially known as the British Airways London Eye - could not open as planned on 31 December because of a problem with a clutch on one of the capsules.

Instead of carrying the 250 invited guests, it spun empty all night as the millennium celebrations carried on around it.

The fault meant the capsule would have turned upside down as the wheel rotated, according to construction experts.

A team of British and German engineers investigated the problem when they examined the clutch on Wednesday.

But on Friday they were working out whether the problem was confined to just one of the capsules, or whether alterations would have to be made to any others.

1 February aim

A British Airways spokesman said: "We are carrying out tests on all the other 31 capsules today and this will probably carry on over the weekend.

"We have already tested seven or eight of the capsules and they are fine, so we are hoping that it was an isolated problem."

The company said it still planned to begin public rides on the wheel on 1 February.

"The imperative now is to get to the bottom of the problem in time for it to be up and running," the spokesman said.

The wheel has proved to be a massive hit with the public, before anyone has even been on it.

Although BA says it hopes to carry 2.5 million passengers in its first 12 months, independent research has indicated the figure could be nearer four million.