A flight from Sydney to Jakarta departed shortly after the Civil Aviation Safety Authority of Australia cleared it for takeoff Monday afternoon.

The resumption of service by Qantas followed 48 hours of travel chaos that left as many as 70,000 passengers stuck in airports around the globe, straining the airline’s relationship with its customers and drawing the ire of the Australian government.

In a statement, Qantas warned international customers to expect delays until at least Tuesday evening, Australian time. But it said domestic services would be running as scheduled from Tuesday morning.

Passengers booked to travel Monday from Los Angeles International airport, a major U.S. hub for Qantas, were told to report to the airport as scheduled. Still, the airline warned those who had been stranded by earlier cancellations to await further information before heading to the airport.

The tribunal’s decision in the early hours of Monday granted 21 days for Qantas and its workers to resolve their acrimonious dispute — the motivation for the airline’s halting of flights Saturday — and reach a binding agreement or face compulsory arbitration.

The action by Qantas that kept its planes out of the skies raised the stakes in the confrontation with its unions after months of tension.

The airline, one of the 10 largest in the world, was hit by a series of labor problems 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 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 media appearances Monday. Her opponents argued, though, 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, quoted her as saying.

The opposition leader, Tony Abbott, wasted little time in blaming the government for the chaos, however, which some said was threatening to tarnish one of the nation’s most notable brands.

“I think the public has had a win, but it is no thanks to the Gillard government,” he said on Australian television.

Meanwhile, the chief executive of Qantas, Alan Joyce, who faced sharp criticism over his decision to ground the fleet, struck a contrite tone. But he also blamed the unions for the disruption.

“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,” Mr. Joyce said in a statement.

He suggested that grounding the fleet had been a tactical move by the airline to break the deadlock with the unions.

“That was the only way we could bring that to a head,” Mr. Joyce was quoted as saying by Reuters after the ruling.

Qantas 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.

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

Two of the leading credit ratings agencies, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard Poor’s, said Monday that they might lower the airline’s rating because of the fallout from the increasingly bitter industrial conflict.

But many investors and analysts seemed relieved that the shutdown of flights had ended and that a resolution to the disagreement with the unions might be in sight. The company’s shares closed up 4.4 percent in Sydney at 1.61 Australian dollars, or $1.06.

Qantas’s brand is unlikely to suffer in the long run, said Cameron McDonald, a Sydney-based aviation analyst with Deutsche Bank.

“It’s a fairly dramatic step,” Mr. McDonald said, referring to the grounding of flights. “The feedback that the company is giving down here is that they did what they deemed to be necessary to bring these things to a conclusion. And you’d have to say they achieved their aim.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=f7f9d582b6a8d1a84d2b650d3bf66318