BRITISH Airways faced a fresh row last night over flying with empty seats while refusing to take passengers still stranded at Heathrow airport by last week’s wildcat strike.

Customers who had been stranded for 72 hours after a walkout by baggage handlers reacted with disbelief when they learnt that they could have been spared another night of sleeping rough.

BA’s rivals leapt upon the latest disclosure as a further public relations disaster for the company after the walkout last Thursday, which delayed more than 100,000 passengers and cost an estimated £40 million.

Around 600 frustrated travellers were still waiting for their flights last night and BA admitted that the backlog would take until tomorrow to clear.

However, the airline refused to say how many flights had departed with empty seats in first and business class because of its refusal to offer an upgrade to marooned economy-class customers.

Passengers advised by their travel agents to request an upgrade were told that the airline’s policy was to keep economy ticket-holders in economy class despite the long delays, The Times has learnt.

A spokeswoman for BA admitted: “Some flights have gone out with empty seats as our policy has been to keep people in the same class as their tickets. However, we have upgraded some people on a discretionary, case-by-case basis.”

She refused to reveal how many economy passengers were upgraded and how many empty seats in other classes were left unfilled. Customer groups criticised BA’s attitude.

Ann Hervey, of Holiday Which? said: “These people have had a hideous experience and as a matter of policy you would want BA to do whatever was possible. It is a matter of good customer care. You would expect them to do everything in their power to get passengers to destinations as quickly as possible.

“However, deciding who gets the better seats could be difficult as they risk everyone demanding an upgrade by way of compensation.”

Rival airlines also expressed disbelief and said that their own approach would have been different. A spokeswoman for Virgin Atlantic said: “Our priority would be to get passengers to destinations as quickly as possible and to give them the best possible experience after the distress of being delayed for so long.”

A spokesman for American Airlines said: “We would do everything possible to get passengers away if seats were free in the aircraft.” Sebouh Nahabedian, a financial analyst from New York, and Ara Asatoorian, a transportation consultant from Los Angeles, said that they were astounded when a BA manager told them they could only have seats in economy class, no matter what seats were free in business class.

There were supposed to fly to Armenia from Heathrow on Thursday but were told by BA that they could not leave until Sunday. But when they rang their travel agent in the US, they discovered that business class seats had been available on Saturday’s flight.

Mr Asatoorian said: “We rang BA and asked if we could be upgraded but the guy would not do it because we had economy tickets. We asked if showing up at the airport and waiting to see if the business seats were claimed would help but he told us that if that were the case then those seats would fly empty. The guy said nothing would help. That was just the cherry on top of the whole situation. This trip has cost us each $3,000 [£1,600] and we have missed three days of our conference. The business class thing was unbelievable. The guy just would not budge.”

Helen Shepherd, 41, was flying back to Cape Town last night. The housewife said: “I think it’s disgraceful that BA didn’t upgrade economy.”

Under article eight of the European passenger rights regulation, passengers are entitled to re-routing under comparable transport conditions to their final destination at the earliest opportunity if flights are cancelled. However, it was unclear last night whether passengers would be entitled to challenge BA’s refusal to upgrade them.

A BA spokesman said last night that it was back to 95 per cent of its scheduled service at Heathrow.

“Everybody who was on a cancelled flight now has a reconfirmed ticket. If they’re not going out today, they will be going out in the next day or two,” he said.

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