flight to London from Bermuda last night have been rerouted and rescheduled, the airline's local manager confirmed yesterday.

Meanwhile, BA was forced to cancel hundreds of flights worldwide as the flight attendants' strike hit its second day, the Associated Press reported.

Local BA manager Philip Troake told The Royal Gazette that the majority of the passengers scheduled to depart had been moved to BA flights to London Gatwick both earlier and later this week.

Others had been reaccommodated as well as possible under the circumstances, he continued.

This involved sending the passengers to the US and on to the UK from there.

Other carriers were used as well as those BA flights which were still operating between the US and the UK, he said.

It was not easy, he added, as it was the height of summer and there were very few free airline seats available.

Virgin Atlantic Airways is honouring BA tickets at face values and it flies to London from Newark, Boston and New York.

A spokesman for Virgin's local sales agents, GSA Bermuda Ltd., said he did not know how many BA passengers were rerouted from Bermuda to those Virgin flights.

BA told the Associated Press that it had to cancel 147 flights scheduled to leave Heathrow and Gatwick yesterday.

There were an unspecified but similar number of cancellations of flights that would have flown into the two airports.

BA managed to struggle through, thanks to charter jets and crews from other airlines. Ten outside aeroplanes were called into London's Heathrow Airport to help deal with the tens of thousands of passengers who have been stranded by the strike.