Two women and a man were released from the rear of the Boeing 727 shortly after 3pm - 13 hours after it touched down at the Essex airport.
Shortly after midday today, five hostages - one woman, two children and two men - left the aircraft parked at Stansted.
Essex police said the released hostages, who were taken to an undisclosed police station following their release, appeared to have been well treated by their captors.
An Essex police spokeswoman said: "The five are being spoken to at a police station and early indications are that they were treated well. The other three released will also be spoken to by police."
The release of the passengers, which included a family of four, was followed by the delivery of food supplies to the jet, parked on an isolated concrete apron close to the perimeter fence on the northern side of the airport.
A number of boxes containing provisions for a hot meal were unloaded from a police Land Rover parked to the rear of the aircraft shortly before 4pm as negotiators embarked on a series of "confidence-building" measures.
The Boeing 727 flown was seized after leaving the capital Kabul en route to Mazar-e-Sharif at 5.30am GMT on Sunday. There were 165 people on board when the aircraft touched down at Stansted, including 23 children, 20 women and 14 crew. One of the hostages was suffering from a kidney complaint, according to police.
Police negotiators at Stansted made contact with the jet soon after it arrived, after a flight from Moscow across western Europe.
The airport was closed in the wake of the hijack drama, but a near-normal service was expected to be operated from the busy hub from later this evening.
Tony Blair was woken to be alerted about the hijack shortly after British authorities learned it was heading for UK airspace at around 1am, the prime minister's official spokesman said.
The decision to allow the aircraft into Britain was taken by foreign office minister John Battle, who was the duty minister, while the cabinet office immediately formed its emergency unit designed to deal with such crises.
Senior police officers underlined their priority was the care and safety of the passengers on board the jet as they entered their 36th hour of captivity.
Essex's deputy chief constable Charles Clark told reporters that the hijackers had asked for supplies to make the hostages' ordeal more comfortable.
He said: "This clearly remains a very sensitive and difficult situation. We are still working towards a peaceful resolution and that remains our primary aim.
"I understand that the occupants of the plane are as comfortable as they possibly can be."
Requests made for the passengers included tea bags and cans of soft drink as well as the hot food which was later delivered.
The Afghan Islamic Press, an independent news agency in Pakistan, reported that the hijackers were demanding the release of Ismail Khan, a key opposition figure who was jailed by the ruling Taliban fundamentalist regime in 1997.
Mr Khan was detained by the Islamic Taliban movement after it swept to power in 1996 on its way to controlling some 90% of the war-torn state.
But a representative of the Afghan government in Europe said his government would not negotiate with "terrorists" led by opposition leader Ahmed Shah Masoo, who he claimed were behind the hijack.
General Rahmatulla Safi said he was confident that the "professionalism" of the British forces would bring an end to the hijacking.
He said: "We are not going to have any negotiations by any means or under any circumstances with hijackers. We are condemning terrorism. This is terrorism."
Stansted is the latest airport of call for the hijacked plane and is the usual destination when planes taken over by terrorists are ordered to land in the UK.
After being seized, the plane first landed in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, then took off after about four hours after 10 passengers were allowed off.
The plane was next forced to land in the northern Kazak city of Aktyubinsk because of a leak in its right fuel tank.
Kazak special forces surrounded the aircraft and officials negotiated with the hijackers before allowing it to leave.
The plane later landed at Moscow where a further nine passengers were reported to have been released before it took off again last night.
It is understood that the hijackers had specifically requested to come to London.
The hijacking comes six weeks after an eight-day hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane ended peacefully in southern Afghanistan. The hijackers in that case freed their hostages after India released three pro-Kashmiri militants from jail.
The Taliban condemned both hijackings, which created headaches for a movement already swamped with security problems. The ruling Taliban militia, with its rigid application of Islamic law, has been ostracised by all but a handful of nations since taking control of most of the country in 1996. The UN imposed sanctions against the Taliban at US prodding after Washington accused Afghanistan of harbouring suspected Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden.
