"Kick 'em while they are down..."

News just keeps getting worse for British Airways customers that had hoped to travel with "The worlds leading airline" over the festive season...

Firstly was to find out that the threatened strike action IS going ahead..

Then they find out that if they booked their flights since news broke of the possible strike action, then their insurance does not cover them for a full refund...

And now, just to top things up, we hear that people booking late festive flights (which are those that have been let down by their preferred carrier) are being charged above premium rates for their flights...

Today's Guardian states that "Air fares over the festive and new year period continued to rise today, as passengers whose holiday plans are threatened by BA's Christmas strike booked with alternative carriers...

A direct, economy class return flight from London to New York leaving on the first day of the proposed 12-day strike and returning after Christmas was fetching as much as £1,527 this morning, while an Air France return Edinburgh-Paris flight over the new year reached £372 on price comparison site Travelsupermarket.com...

Long-term rival Virgin Atlantic said its call centre had been "inundated" with enquires from concerned BA passengers since the strike was announced on Tuesday and that only "a handful" of seats were left on popular shared routes...

"Our call centre has been inundated with calls from worried travellers," said a spokeswoman...

The airline announced yesterday that it would operate larger aircraft on some routes during the BA strike period, including Newark, Boston, Washington DC and Delhi.

EasyJet today reported an increase in enquiries and bookings but said it still had availability on most of the 96 routes it shares with BA. The no-frills airline, which is offering BA Executive Club gold card holders free speedy boarding, is not laying on additional services at this stage but will consider this once BA's services are confirmed...

Virgin Trains will run an additional 25 services on the London to Glasgow via Preston route over the holiday period to help affected passengers...

Eurostar said it had seen an increase in enquiries rather than bookings for the period of the strike and said it had good availability on its high-speed rail services...

"We have several thousand seats available both to Paris and Brussels," a spokesman said. "We're finding that people are holding tight to see what happens with British Airways..."

But its not all doom and gloom as "BA will hold fresh talks with union leaders "without preconditions" at 3pm today, in a bid to avert the industrial action, which could disrupt the festive travel plans of up to a million passengers.

A Unite spokesman said: "We are glad that BA management has seen sense and we hope we can now move from confrontation to negotiation and get the dispute resolved.""

So, fingers crossed then..

Follow this story at http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/dec/16/flights-british-airways-strike

Barticus.