British Airways cabin crew have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action in a dispute over job cuts and changes to staff contracts.

The strikes are set to begin on 22 December and run until 2 January.

Cabin crew voted by nine to one in favour of the strike action, with an 80% turnout.

BA’s chief executive Willie Walsh said the decision was “cynical” and betrayed “a lack of concern for our customers, our business and other employees”.

Len McCluskey, assistant general secretary of the Unite union, said: “It goes without saying that we have taken this decision to disrupt passengers and customers over the Christmas period with a heavy heart.”

He stressed that the union was keen to continue negotiations.

“We will wait, ready to meet, anytime, anywhere, 24 hours a day, to try to see if we can resolve the dispute.”

More than 900,000 people are scheduled to fly with BA during the strike period, many of them families who will have saved all year to visit relatives and friends for Christmas. Many were scrambling to book with other airlines this afternoon after the results of the ballot were released.

Union bosses called a 12-day stoppage, to begin on December 22 unless talks can resume with management. The union said that no BA flights would leave British airports during that period.

Mr Walsh said he had told the Unite union he was available for talks, but was uncompromising on the central issue of the dispute.

“The changes that we introduced in the middle of November will not be reversed. Those changes enabled us to offer voluntary redundancy to 1,000 cabin crew and those people have left the business.”

Why are they striking?

The size of the ballot – 92 per cent in favour, with an 80 per cent turnout – suggests unhappiness runs deep among BA cabin staff. The crew argue the company’s cost cutting is jeopardising the one thing that used to make the company stand out: customer service.

BA last month reduced the number of crew on a long-haul flight from 15 to 14, by forcing the cabin service directors – the most senior crew – to no longer just oversee the staff, but to start serving meals and drinks as well.

BA argues the average take-home pay of a CSD on a long-haul flight is £56,325, making them some of the best paid staff in the industry and that it has a crippling pension deficit and a global recession to contend with. Something needs to give.

The company has also frozen pay and it wants all new recruits to accept less favourable contracts than existing staff. This will, Unite the union argues, create an “apartheid” among the staff.