Qantas Planes Return to the Skies After Court Order

The tribunal’s decision granted 21 days for Qantas and its workers to resolve their acrimonious dispute — which had prompted the airline’s move to halt flights — and reach a binding agreement or face compulsory arbitration.

A flight from Sydney to Jakarta departed shortly after the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority cleared it for takeoff on Monday afternoon, The Associated Press reported.

As many as 70,000 passengers had been stranded since Saturday during the suspension of service by the airline.

Qantas’s move to keep its planes out of the skies raised the stakes in the confrontation with its unions after months of tension between the two sides.

The airline, one of the 10 largest in the world, had been hit by a series of labor problems in recent months as employees voiced concern about wage inequality and the moving of jobs out of Australia. Workers staged various actions that included brief strikes and the refusal to work overtime.

Despite a direct appeal by the embattled Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, to solve the matter swiftly, hundreds of flights were canceled over the weekend and it took a court order to get the planes moving again.

Ms. Gillard tried to seize some credit for the resolution in a series of news media appearances Monday, as her opponents argued that she had failed to break the impasse herself because of her ties to the labor unions.

“I’ve done what I needed to do to get this dispute brought to an end, to get the planes back in the sky,” The Australian, a daily newspaper, reported her as saying.

The opposition leader, Tony Abbott, wasted no time in blaming the government for the debacle, however, which paralyzed much of the air travel throughout the country and threatened to tarnish one of the nation’s most iconic brands.

“The government didn’t do anything, so many people have been sitting in terminals because the government has been sitting on its hands,” he said in an interview on Australian television. “I think the public has had a win, but it is no thanks to the Gillard government.”

Meanwhile, the chief executive of Qantas, Alan Joyce, who faced sharp criticism over his decision to ground the fleet, struck a contrite tone as he promised to get its planes flying again.

“I apologize to all Qantas passengers that have been impacted by the industrial action by unions over the past few months and in particular the past few days,” he said in a statement after the ruling.

Qantas has had to reduce and reschedule flights for weeks because of the labor actions. But the unions said they were the injured party and accused the company of planning to outsource the company’s operations to Asia.

The grounding of the fleet cost the airline an estimated $21 million a day. Qantas, which employs about 35,000 people, said it had already been losing $16 million a week in revenue as a result of the union actions.

The carrier has several flights a day from Australia to the United States, including routes to New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Honolulu.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/business/global/qantas-planes-return-to-the-skies-after-court-order.html?partner=rss&emc=rss