The two sides in the British Airways dispute agreed to talk Wednesday, days before cabin crew are set to go on a 12-day strike that will cause chaos for the airline during the busy holiday travel period.

The Unite union said it had accepted an offer from BA to meet for talks at 3 p.m. (10 a.m. ET).

The talks do not affect British Airways’ plans to go to the High Court in London in the afternoon to seek an injunction to stop the strike. Doyle said Unite representatives planned to attend the hearing, scheduled for 2 p.m. (9 a.m. ET), to “vigorously defend” their position.

More than 12,500 BA employees voted in November to walk out because of planned changes to cabin crew conditions. Deputy General Secretary Len McCluskey announced the result of the ballot Monday, showing more than 92 percent of BA cabin crew approved of a strike.

The strike vote came after the airline introduced cost-cutting measures including a two-year pay freeze and reducing the numbers of cabin crew members on long-haul flights.

BA says the changes, introduced in the wake of a record pre-tax loss of more than $485 million for the six months from April to September, will save the airline $665 million.

Separately, the International Air Transport Association, an umbrella group for the air travel industry, predicted Tuesday that the world’s airlines will lose $5.6 billion in 2010. That’s more than the group’s previous prediction of a $3.8 billion loss in 2010, but still only half as much as it expects the industry to lose this year.

Around 1 million passengers could potentially be affected by the strike, finding themselves unable to take their flights or stranded at their destinations, unable to return home.

British Airways has said passengers holding tickets for the strike period may rebook for any date in the next 12 months with no penalty, but ticketholders still hoping to fly over the holidays are faced with a dilemma.

The airline has said it will only refund a passenger’s ticket if their flight is canceled, and so far BA has not canceled any flights because of the strike.

So right now many holiday travel plans are up in the air for many people. Due to the British Airways strike, which will take place over the holiday, passengers do not even know if they have a flight to fly on. To make matters worse, there is not much people can do until they find out just what flights are canceled for sure.

Although the holiday season draws ever closer, many people still do not know what they are doing. Unless people are prepared to lose a lot of money, they cannot cancel their flight before British Airways cancels it, unless they have a flexible ticket. Thus, many people just have to wait and see if they are going to be on one of the flights that gets cut.

Normally the airline would try to save the long haul routes in the event of a strike. This is normally just because these flights are the most profitable, and thus, the airline tries to save them. However, no one will know for sure until British Airways starts canceling flights later this week.

If a passenger finds themselves on a flight that gets canceled, then the European Union does require that British Airways either offer a full refund or a chance to rebook a flight at a later date or with another airline. However, due to the fact that it is the holiday season, booking with another airline could be hard, because most seats are already bought up.

For people that are just heading to Continental Europe, they should start checking for ferry tickets as soon as possible. These tickets are going to do nothing but go up further in price. Thus, for anyone that books now, they could save themselves a lot of money in the long run.

(Source: CNN)