Just two weeks after a series of British Airways strikes was cancelled, air passengers are once again facing the threat of chaos on the route between Bermuda and the UK.

Union officials announced yesterday that thousands of check-in staff and baggage handlers had rejected the airline's plans for a shake-up of company pensions.

They said industrial action was a possibility if negotiations with BA bosses failed to produce an agreement.

A strike could lead to cancellations and major delays on the BA line from Bermuda to London, meaning passengers to and from the Island would have to make inconvenient diversions via North America.

Business leaders say this would throw Bermuda's vital links with Europe into disarray.

At the end of last month, a last-gasp deal was struck to call off a string of three-day walkouts involving thousands of cabin crew staff who were unhappy over pay and conditions.

The new row involves members of the GMB union. Ed Blissett, national negotiator at GMB, said in a statement yesterday: "GMB members covered by the British Airways pension fund have given the union a strong mandate to reject the company's pension funds offer.

"The members clearly believe that the current pension offer favours the highest paid workers in BA at the expense of the lowest paid.

"GMB members do not want to cause the travelling public any inconvenience and so they have asked their negotiators to try to negotiate a settlement with BA.

"However, GMB cannot rule out the possibility of an industrial action ballot sometime in the future if negotiations are unsuccessful."

Mr. Blissett and GMB general secretary Paul Kenny are due to meet BA chief executive Willie Walsh at Heathrow tomorrow to discuss the result of the consultation ballot.

The threat of industrial action by BA cabin crew first emerged towards the end of last year and rumbled on for a number of weeks. A deal was finally agreed after more than 120 hours of talks between Mr. Walsh and the Transport and General Workers Union (T&G) at the end of January.

BA announced last week that the threat of strikes had helped cause January traffic to fall 2.8 percent compared with the same month in 2006.

The airline's representatives in Bermuda were unavailable for comment yesterday.