Qantas to resume flights after govt intervenes in dispute

An Australian tribunal ordered Qantas Airways to put its planes back into the air, intervening in the nation's most dramatic labour dispute in a decade after the national carrier grounded its entire global fleet.

Qantas had taken the drastic step at the weekend to ground all flights, disrupting nearly 70,000 passengers and bringing to a head a bitter battle with trade unions over pay, working conditions and its plan to base more operations in Asia.

Qantas's action left the government with no option but to step in and demand the tribunal make an urgent ruling on the dispute, which had been bleeding an airline that carries about a fifth of Australia's international passengers.

Qantas said flights could resume as early as Monday afternoon, on a limited schedule.

"We are pleased that after 24 hours of turmoil that common sense will be restored to the aviation and tourism sectors of Australia," Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten said after the independent labour tribunal, Fair Work Australia, ordered the end to hostilities in the early hours of Monday morning.

The tribunal ordered Qantas and its unions to end all industrial action and resolve the dispute within 21 days or face a binding arbitration decision.

"We will be getting our aircraft back up in the air as soon as we possibly can," Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce said.

But with 108 aircraft grounded, almost 500 flights cancelled and Australia's tourism image tarnished in a single weekend, Prime Minister Julia Gillard was left fuming at Qantas's tactic.

"I believe Qantas took an extreme approach on Saturday," Gillard told Channel Seven TV on Monday. "With very little notice to government or passengers, it grounded planes. It did that in circumstances where it had other options."

The dispute has dogged Qantas for months but it escalated recently when it announced plans to cut 1,000 jobs and order $9 billion worth of new aircraft as part of a makeover to salvage its loss-making international business.

The airline made a pre-tax profit of $552 million in the year to June 30 .

Union representatives said they would work with Qantas to resume flights as soon as possible but some of them sought to cast Joyce as a reckless manager prepared to crash the airline rather than seek a negotiated settlement.

"The board should immediately sack their out-of-control CEO," said Captain Richard Woodward, vice president of the Australian and International Pilots Association. He described Joyce's behaviour as "megalomaniacal".

The grounding angered stranded passengers and the government, overshadowing Prime Minister Gillard's hosting of a summit of Commonwealth leaders in the western city of Perth.

On Sunday, Gillard said she had intervened because of concerns about damage to the economy and had called on the airline and union to quickly end the industrial action.

Almost 20 leaders at the summit had been booked to fly out with Qantas, but Gillard said most had made alternate flight plans.