British Airways today challenged the low-cost carriers by announcing five million bargain European tickets to 80 destinations in a special children-go-free offer.

The airline, which has 7,500 staff at Gatwick Airport, is offering £69 tickets to such cities as Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Barcelona and Madrid. A child can go free, except for airport tax, with each adult ticket on European routes.

Tickets will be on sale for 10 days from tomorrow and are for travel until the end of March 2002.

Other tickets are priced at £89 and include Munich, Rotterdam and Dublin. Tickets prices £109 include Bordeaux, Nice and Oslo.

The top-priced tickets in the special offer are £189 and include the Russian cities of Moscow and St Petersburg. For the offer, BA classifies children as youngsters up to their 12th birthday.

BA stressed the tickets would be valid for travel until the end of March. This includes half-term and Christmas school holidays.

BA's worldwide sales director Dale Moss said: "This is great news for parents as there are tens of thousands of free kids' seats on offer.

"This is just the start of a series of promotional campaigns."

While low-cost carriers such as Ryanair and easyJet have ridden out the post-

September 11 aviation crisis by lowering fares BA, until now, had resisted fare cuts.

But the airline has seen passenger numbers dip and has had to announce big job losses, a pay freeze and scrapping of some routes.

Mr Moss added: "This offer is very competitive with those offered by low-cost carriers."