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These new workers are in addition to the 216 workers currently undergoing training with the group.

The recruitment drive follows a summer of travel chaos for the airline's customers, blamed on staff shortages.

Last month, more than 100 flights from Heathrow were cancelled by BA - prompting a review of staffing there by chief executive Rod Eddington.

Shortage chaos

"The disruption of 23 August was not caused by any one single issue ... but a shortage of staff to help our customers was a significant one and we have addressed that as an absolute priority," Mr Eddington said.

"Our customers rightly expect first class customer service staff and last month we fell short of the standards we set ourselves."

The decision to enlist more staff follows a series of cuts in an effort to reduce costs by �869m - which included slashing 13,000 jobs.

It also comes after the group announced, on 15 September, that it would reduce its flying programme for three months "to uphold operational robustness".

Under this plan, some 936 flights were cancelled out of 42,000 flights in and out of Heathrow - or 2% of BA's winter flying programme