Emergency hearing on Qantas crisis

Australia’s government ordered an emergency arbitration hearing today after Qantas Airways grounded its global fleet amid a bitter dispute with striking workers, stranding passengers around the world.

Government leaders, who expressed frustration over the airline’s actions, were expected to argue at the hearing that Qantas should be forced to fly in Australia’s economic interests.

“It’s not our place to start allocating responsibility, but what I also know is there is a better way to resolve these matters ... than locking your customers out,” assistant treasurer Bill Shorten said before the hearing in Melbourne. “We want more common sense than that.”

Qantas, the world’s 10th-largest airline, announced yesterday that it would ground all flights.

But chief executive Alan Joyce said the airline could be flying again within hours if the three arbitration judges ruled to permanently terminate the grounding and the unions’ strike action.

The unions want the judges to rule for a suspension so the strikes can be resumed if their negotiations with the national flag carrier fail.

“Within six hours, we can get the fleet flying again” after the aviation regulator provides a routine clearance, Mr Joyce told Australian Broadcasting Corporation television.

“We have to wait and see what that process generates today,” he said.

Planes already in the air when the grounding was announced continued to their destinations and at least one taxiing flight stopped on the runway, a passenger said.

Among the stranded passengers are 17 world leaders attending the Commonwealth summit in the western Australian city of Perth.

When the grounding was announced, 36 international and 28 domestic Australian flights were in the air, the airline said.

Qantas, which flies 70,000 passengers a day, said 108 planes were being grounded at 22 airports, but did not say how many flights were involved. Spokesman Tom Woodward said 13,000 passengers were booked to fly international flights to Australia within 24 hours of the grounding.

The worst problems for travellers are likely to be at far busier Qantas hubs in Singapore and London’s Heathrow Airport.

Booked passengers were being rescheduled on a 24-hour basis, with Qantas handling any costs in transferring bookings to other airlines, said Mr Woodward.

Bookings already had collapsed after unions warned travellers to fly other airlines through the busy Christmas-New Year period.

Mr Joyce told a news conference in Sydney that the unions’ actions had created a crisis for Qantas.

“They are trashing our strategy and our brand,” he said. “They are deliberately destabilising the company, and there is no end in sight.”

Union leaders criticised the grounding action as extreme. Qantas is among the most profitable airlines in the world, but Mr Joyce estimated that the grounding would cost the airline €14m a day.

Qantas already had reduced and rescheduled flights for weeks after union workers went on strike and refused to work overtime over worries that a restructuring plan would move some of Qantas’ 35,000 jobs overseas.

Australia’s prime minister Julia Gillard said her government would help the Commonwealth leaders fly home after 17 were due to fly out of Perth on Qantas planes over the next couple of days.

“They took it in good spirits when I briefed them about it,” she told reporters.

British tourist Chris Crulley, 25, from Newcastle, said the pilot on his Qantas flight informed passengers while taxiing down a Sydney runway that he had to return to the terminal “to take an important phone call”. The flight was then grounded.

“We’re all set for the flight and settled in and the next thing – I’m stunned. We’re getting back off the plane,” the firefighter said from Sydney Airport.

Mr Crulley, on his way home after a five-week holiday, added: “I’ve got to get back to the other side of the world by Wednesday for work. It’s a nightmare.”

Qantas offered him up to 350 Australian dollars (€265) a day for food and accommodation.

Australians Len and Christie Dunlop were stranded at Heathrow when their flight to Sydney was grounded.

The couple, who have lived in Leeds for four years, said they would have to catch up with fewer friends when they returned to Perth for three weeks for a friend’s wedding.

Ms Gillard said her centre-left government, affiliated with the trade union movement, had “taken a rare decision” to seek an end to the strike action out of necessity.

“I believe it is warranted in the circumstances we now face with Qantas ... circumstances with this industrial dispute that could have implications for our national economy,” she said.

Transport minister Anthony Albanese described the grounding as “disappointing” and “extraordinary”, sayige he was angry that Qantas gave him only three hours’ notice.

All 108 aircraft will be grounded until unions representing pilots, mechanics, baggage handlers and caterers reach agreements with Qantas over pay and conditions, Mr Joyce said. Staff will not be paid from tomorrow.

“This is a crisis for Qantas. If the action continues as the unions have promised, we will have no choice but to close down Qantas part by part,” he said.

Richard Woodward, vice president of the pilots’ union, accused Qantas of “holding a knife to the nation’s throat” and said Mr Joyce had “gone mad.”

And Steve Purvinas, federal secretary of the mechanics’ union, described the grounding as “an extreme measure”.`

Qantas executive Lyell Strambi told the arbitration court that suspending the staff lockout for three months could endanger aircraft safety.

He said crews could be distracted or angered by the risk to their future earnings of another lockout, which could cause fatigue and degrade personal performance.

“That could lead to conflicts in the cockpit – an array of things,” Mr Strambi told the tribunal.

“Action is suspended for a period of time, but the threat of action doesn’t go away. The genie is out of the bottle.”