Air travellers have been threatened with further disruption because of a dispute involving customer service staff at two of the UK's biggest airports.

About 400 workers at Heathrow and Birmingham began voting on whether to stage a series of strikes in protest at the loss of their occupational pension scheme.

The workers, including ticketing staff and customer service employees, work for a French-owned company which provides services for Lufthansa flights.

Amicus, which represents the workers, said if they voted in favour of industrial action it would have a "profound" effect on Lufthansa services.

The staff started voting yesterday and the result is expected next month.

But there was some confusion yesterday as Birmingham insisted it was not involved in any dispute.

A spokeswoman said its customer and other ground services for Lufthansa were provided by a company which was not involved in the dispute with Amicus.

The fresh threat came as crucial talks were continuing in London in a bid to resolve the British Airways swipe card dispute.

The company was holding talks with leaders of the three unions involved in the dispute amid hopes that the deadlock could soon be broken.

A source close to the talks said the negotiations were going "forward rather than backward".

The indications were that the talks would continue into the evening.

Sir Bill Morris, general secretary of the TGWU, said during one of the adjournments that the chances of a deal were still 50-50 but other union officials were more optimistic.

Hundreds of workers walked out the week before last in protest which led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights and travel chaos for more than 80,000 passengers.

BA will indicate the impact of the dispute on its finances by the end of the week and will publish on Thursday results for the first quarter of the financial year which are expected to show losses of at least £50 million.

Wednesday July 30, 2003