action by pilots will not get off the ground.

The strike -- over pay and conditions -- was scheduled to start next Tuesday.

But yesterday the UK's Airline Pilots Association announced they had struck a deal with management.

Philip Troake, BA's general manager in Bermuda, said: "There is no doubt if there had been a strike we would have been badly affected.

"We faced major disruption across our whole network -- we are very pleased the whole thing has been averted.'' He added: "There has been inconvenience because people made contingency plans of their own and booked different flights.

"We apologise to people who were forced to go to that trouble, but those can now be cancelled because it's business as usual.'' Pilots threatened to keep the airline on the ground from next week. A key issue in the negotiations was lower pay scales for pilots flying short-haul European flights out of London's Gatwick Airport.

BA had insisted it had to cut costs at Gatwick -- a major hub for bargain-hunting tourists.

But a pilots' union said BA had agreed to a 3.6 percent pay rise and to place the Gatwick European pilots on the same scale as pilots flying out of regional airports like Manchester and Scottish ones like Glasgow.

The pay rise was the original BA offer -- but union negotiators claimed they had won concessions on other pay matters and conditions.

Chris Darke, secretary-general of the pilots' union, said: "We've achieved most of what our members wanted -- we're absolutely delighted.

A spokesman for BA's British HQ said the aggeement was "very good news'' for the airline, which carries 90,000 passengers a day on 1000 flights.

BA -- the only carrier to fly direct to London from Bermuda -- currently has four flights a week in and out of the Island.