CANBERRA, Australia – Qantas Airways planes returned to the skies Monday after an Australian court ruled on a bitter labor dispute that had prompted the world’s 10th-largest airline to ground its entire fleet.

A flight from Sydney to Jakarta, Indonesia, took off shortly after Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority gave the “Flying Kangaroo,” as the Australian flag carrier is known, the all-clear to resume flying.

Qantas said in a statement it still expected some delays as it worked to clear the backlog of customers affected by the nearly 48-hour grounding. The airline is adding extra flights and expects its schedule to return to normal within one or two days.

The grounding disrupted the travel plans of tens of thousands of people across the world, and Qantas passengers were gathering at airports in Australia, Los Angeles and elsewhere in the hopes of finally getting to their destinations.

The airline’s resumption of flights comes around 12 hours after an emergency ruling by an arbitration court ended weeks of strikes and canceled a staff lockout.

The court ruling was a major victory in the airline’s battle with unions representing pilots, aircraft mechanics, baggage handlers and caterers, whose rolling strikes have forced the cancellation of 600 flights in recent months, disrupted travel for 70,000 passengers and cost Qantas 70 million Australian dollars ($75 million).

But some aviation experts said the surprise grounding of all 108 planes on Saturday, at a cost of $20 million a day, has hurt the Australian flagship carrier’s reputation around the world. Moody’s Investors Service said it could downgrade the airline’s credit ratings as the weekend’s events could hurt bookings, profits and the value of the Qantas brand.

Still, the stock market welcomed the weekend developments as allowing the airline to focus on its long-term strategy. Qantas shares on Monday jumped 4.3 percent to AU$1.61 on the stock exchange in Sydney.

Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst in San Francisco, predicts the shutdown will do long-term damage to the Qantas name by hurting its reputation for reliability.

“A lot of travelers won’t take a chance and will book away to Virgin Australia, Air New Zealand and other airlines,” Harteveldt said. “Brand loyalty in the airline business is very low, and there is so much competition.”

Before the court ruling, Virgin Australia said it was scheduling extra flights and offering 20 percent fare discounts to help stranded Qantas passengers through Thursday.

If Qantas loses customers, that could also hurt partners in its alliance of global airlines, including American Airlines. A rival alliance that includes Air New Zealand and is led by United Continental Holdings Inc. could benefit, as could a third group of airlines that includes several major Asian carriers and is led by Delta Air Lines Inc. and Air France-KLM.

CEO Alan Joyce praised the court ruling, which prevents unions from taking any further strike action over their demands for pay hikes and job security clauses under news contracts being negotiated. The strikes have been blamed for a sharp decline in the airline’s future bookings.

“The important thing is that all industrial action is now over and we have certainty,” Joyce told reporters in Sydney.

“We will be returning to business as usual over the next 24 hours,” he said.

Other industry veterans said the lockout was a daring move that will pay off for Qantas, which wants to expand the low-cost, low-fare model that it uses at its Jetstar Airways subsidiary.

Jetstar has extensive routes to Southeast Asia and Japan, and lower costs than Qantas. But Qantas unions fear that expansion of low-cost airlines will result in Australian jobs being sent overseas. Joyce hopes to bend the unions closer to the company’s vision for growth by tapping into Asian markets.

“It was a very shrewd move by their CEO to force the issue and stop the potential deterioration of the brand,” said Mo Garfinkle, an airline consultant who has worked for Qantas rival Virgin Australia. “In the end, it will benefit Qantas financially.”

Garfinkle said the short duration of the fleet grounding will help Qantas get back up to full speed quickly, cutting its losses.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday described the grounding as “extreme,” while Transport Minister Tony Albanese has sharply criticized Joyce for giving the government only three hours notice of his plans.

The Australian government, angered by a lack of warning of the grounding, had called an emergency court hearing on Saturday night to end the work bans for the sake of the national economy.

The three judges heard more than 14 hours of testimony from the airline, the government and unions. Workers have held rolling strikes and refused overtime work for weeks out of worry that some of Qantas’ 32,500 jobs would be moved overseas in a restructuring plan.

The unions wanted the court to temporarily suspend the employee lockout so that strike action could resume if negotiations in the labor dispute failed to progress. But the airline said the strikes had devastated the airline’s reputation for reliability and that the threat needed to be removed permanently before customers would return.

Tribunal President Geoffrey Giudice said the panel decided that a temporary suspension would still risk Qantas’ grounding its fleet in the future and would not protect the tourism and aviation industries from damage.

Qantas is the largest of Australia’s four national domestic airlines, and the grounding affected 108 planes in 22 countries.

About 70,000 passengers fly Qantas daily, and would-be fliers this weekend were stuck at home, hotels or airports, or even had to suddenly deplane when Qantas suspended operations. More than 60 flights were in the air at the time but continued to their destinations, and Qantas was paying for passengers to book other flights.

Qantas infuriated unions in August when it said it would improve its loss-making overseas business by creating an Asia-based airline with its own name and brand. The five-year restructure plan will cost 1,000 jobs.

The airline also said in August that it had more than doubled annual profit to AU$250 million but warned that the business environment was too challenging to forecast earnings for the current fiscal year.

Qantas is the 10th-largest airline in the world by passenger miles flown, according to the International Air Transport Association, an airline trade group.

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Associated Press writers David Koenig from Dallas, Texas, and Andrew Dalton from Los Angeles contributed to this report.

30 October 2011
Last updated at 09:45 ET

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has warned of an “earthquake” if the West intervenes in his country.

In a rare interview with the UK’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Mr Assad said involvement risked transforming Syria into “another Afghanistan”.

The UN has renewed its call for the repression to end, and China has warned Syria the situation cannot continue.

More than 50 civilians and members of the security forces were killed on Saturday, according to the two sides.

Activists said 21 civilians were killed and that army tanks had shelled a historic district in the city of Homs.

The government said 20 soldiers were killed in Homs, and 10 members of the security forces were killed during an ambush of their bus in Idlib province.

More than 3,000 people have died in the unrest since protests calling for the government of Mr Assad to step down broke out in March.

‘Faultline’

In the Sunday Telegraph interview, Mr Assad said Western countries were “going to ratchet up the pressure, definitely”.

“Syria is the hub now in this region. It is the faultline, and if you play with the ground you will cause an earthquake,” he said.

“Any problem in Syria will burn the whole region. If the plan is to divide Syria, that is to divide the whole region.

“Do you want to see another Afghanistan, or tens of Afghanistans?”

President Assad admitted that “many mistakes” had been made by his security forces in the early part of the uprising, but the paper said he insisted that “only terrorists” were now being targeted.

He said he had responded differently to the Arab Spring than other, deposed Arab leaders.

“We didn’t go down the road of stubborn government,” he said. “Six days after [the protests began], I commenced reform.”

Mr Assad described the uprising as a “struggle between Islamism and pan-Arabism”.

“We’ve been fighting the Muslim Brotherhood since the 1950s and we are still fighting with them,” he said.

Meanwhile China’s Middle East envoy Wu Sike said he had warned Syria on his recent visit to Damascus about the “danger of the situation and that it cannot continue”.

Mr Wu, now in Cairo, said he had told Mr Assad he must “respect and respond to the aspirations and rightful demands of the Syrian people”.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Mr Assad must respond to demands for change with serious reform, “not repression and violence”, and called for an immediate halt to military operations.

His calls echo those of members of the Arab League who on Friday sent an “urgent message” to the Syrian government, denouncing “the continued killings of civilians” taking part in protests.

The Arab League’s ministerial committee on the Syrian crisis also urged Damascus to “take the necessary measures” to protect civilians.

League officials are meeting Syrian counterparts again in Qatar on Sunday to discuss the possibility of a dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition.

However, the League’s two-week deadline for such a dialogue to start expires on Sunday.

Soldiers killed

On Saturday, two of the country’s main activist groups, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Co-ordinating Committees, said shells had hit the Baba Amr district of Homs.

Reuters news agency reported that one person was shot dead by a sniper and two were killed during machinegun fire between Mr Assad’s forces and defectors in the city. Activists said that 21 civilians had been killed on Saturday, including 12 in Hama and three in Homs.

Raids and arrests also were reported around the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, the Associated Press reports.

In another incident near Homs, up to 20 Syrian soldiers were killed and 53 wounded in clashes with presumed army deserters, according to Agence France-Presse.

In a separate incident, 10 security agents and a deserter were killed in a bus ambush near the Turkish border, AFP reported, quoting activists.

The Observatory said the bus was transporting security agents between the villages of al-Habit and Kafrnabuda in Idlib province when it was ambushed “by armed men, probably deserters”.

BEIRUT – Syrian President Bashar Assad warned against Western intervention in his country’s 7-month-old uprising, saying such action would trigger an “earthquake” that “would burn the whole region.”

Assad comments, published in an interview with Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, were made against a backdrop of growing calls from anti-regime protesters for a no-fly zone over Syria and increasingly frequent clashes between government troops and army defectors, the latest of which left at least 30 troops dead Saturday.

“Syria is the hub now in this region. It is the fault line, and if you play with the ground you will cause an earthquake,” Assad said. “Do you want to see another Afghanistan, or tens of Afghanistans?”

Assad’s remarks appeared to reflect his regime’s increasing concern about foreign intervention in the country’s crisis after the recent death of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who was toppled by a popular uprising backed by NATO airstrikes.

Syrian opposition leaders have not called for an armed uprising like the one in Libya and have for the most part opposed foreign intervention, and the U.S. and its allies have shown little appetite for intervening in another Arab nation in turmoil. But with the 7-month-old revolt against Assad stalemated, some Syrian protesters have begun calling for a no-fly zone over the country because of fears the regime might use its air force now that army defectors are becoming more active in fighting the security forces.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a clash Saturday night in the restive central city of Homs between soldiers and gunmen believed to be army defectors left at least 20 soldiers dead and 53 wounded. It also said gunmen ambushed a bus carrying security officers late Saturday in the northwestern province of Idlib, killing at least 10 security agents. One attacker was also killed.

The Associated Press could not verify the activists’ accounts. Syria has banned most foreign media and restricted local coverage, making it impossible to get independent confirmation of the events on the ground. Syria’s state-run news agency SANA, said seven members of the military and police, who were killed in Homs and the suburbs of Damascus were buried Sunday.

The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said Sunday that 343 people, including 20 children, have been killed in Syria since Oct. 16, when the Cairo-based Arab League gave Damascus a 15-day deadline to enact a cease-fire. A meeting was scheduled for later Sunday in Qatar between an Arab committee set up by the 22-member Arab League and a Syrian delegation expected to be headed by Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem.

The unrest in Syria could send unsettling ripples through the region, as Damascus’ web of alliances extends to Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement, the militant Palestinian Hamas and Iran’s Shiite theocracy.

Unlike Gadhafi, Assad enjoys a number of powerful allies that give him the means to push back against the outside pressure. A conflict in Syria risks touching off a wider Middle East conflict with arch foes Israel and Iran in the mix. Syria wouldn’t have to look far for prime targets to strike, sharing a border with U.S.-backed Israel and NATO-member Turkey.

In case of an international intervention, Assad and his main Mideast backer, Iran, could launch retaliatory attacks on Israel or — more likely — unleash Hezbollah fighters or Palestinian militant allies for the job. To the north, Turkey has opened its doors to anti-Assad activists and breakaway military rebels, which also could bring Syrian reprisals.

Assad alluded to those concerns at home and abroad, saying “any problem in Syria will burn the whole region. If the plan is to divide Syria, that is to divide the whole region.”

The uprising against the Syrian regime began during a wave of anti-government protests in the Arab world that toppled autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The U.N. says that Assad’s crackdown has left more than 3,000 people dead since the uprising began in mid-March.

Facing an unprecedented threat to his rule, Assad is desperate to show that only he can guarantee security in a troubled region where failed states abound.

In a show of support to Assad’s regime, thousands of Syrians carrying the nation’s flag and Assad posters rallied Sunday in a major square in the southern city of Sweida, some 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Damascus, near the Jordanian border. There have been two similar massive pro-Assad demonstrations in recent days in the capital Damascus and the coastal city of Latakia.

Assad said that Western countries “are going to ratchet up the pressure, definitely.” He was apparently referring to a wave of sanctions that were imposed by the European Union and the U.S.

“But Syria is different in every respect from Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen. The history is different. The politics is different,” Assad said.

The Syrian president described the uprising as a “struggle between Islamism and pan-Arabism.” He was referring to his ruling Baath party’s secular ideology and the Muslim Brotherhood that was crushed by his regime in 1982.

“We’ve been fighting the Muslim Brotherhood since the 1950s and we are still fighting with them,” Assad said.

Assad also spoke to Russia’s state Channel One television, and in an interview broadcast Sunday hailed Moscow’s veto of a European-backed U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria that aimed to impose sanctions on Damascus.

“We are relying on Russia as a country with which we have strong historic ties,” Assad said.

The measure vetoed by Russia and China earlier this month would have been the first legally binding resolution against Syria since Assad’s forces began attacking civilian protesters.

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Bassem Mroue can be reached on http://twitter.com/bmroue

CANBERRA, Australia – Tens of thousands of stranded Qantas Airways passengers scrambled to reach their destinations Sunday as the airline, its unions and the Australian government argued in a lengthy arbitration hearing over the abrupt grounding of its entire fleet.

The airline demanded a permanent ruling against more union strikes, with CEO Alan Joyce saying a temporary order would not ensure Qantas would get its planes back into the air.

The government wants the panel to order Qantas to fly in Australia’s economic interests and would prefer a permanent order, while the unions are arguing for temporary suspensions.

Tribunal President Geoffrey Giudice said after 14 hours of hearings that his panel of three judges will not immediately announce their decision.

“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,” Australian Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten told reporters ahead of the arbitration hearing in the southern city of Melbourne. “We want more common sense than that.”

About 70,000 passengers fly Qantas daily, and would-be fliers this weekend were stuck at home, hotels, airports or even had to suddenly deplane when Qantas suspended operations Saturday. More than 60 flights were in the air at the time but flew to their destinations, and Qantas was paying for passengers to book other flights.

Qantas had reduced and rescheduled flights for weeks as union workers struck and refused to work overtime out of worries that a restructuring plan would move some of Qantas’ 35,000 jobs overseas.

German tourist Michael Messmann was trying to find a way home from Singapore on Sunday. He and his wife spent five weeks traveling around Australia but found their connecting flight home to Frankfurt suddenly canceled.

“I don’t know the details of the dispute, but it seems like a severe reaction by the airline to shut down all their flights. That seems a bit extreme,” said Messmann, 68. “After five weeks of traveling, we just want to go home.”

Australian business traveler Graeme Yeatman sided with the airline, even though he was also trying to find a new flight home to Sydney on Sunday after his flight was canceled.

“I think the unions have too much power over Qantas. Even though this is an inconvenience for me, I’m glad the airline is drawing a line in the sand,” said Yeatman, 41.

The court listened to arguments Saturday and Sunday after the government called the emergency hearing.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said the airline could be flying again within hours if the three arbitration judges rule to permanently terminate the grounding and the unions’ strike action.

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

The government’s lawyer Tom Howe submitted to the court that the lockout and strikes should be terminated or at least suspended for four months.

He said a suspension was only a temporary solution to a dispute that threatened significant economic damage to Australia’s tourism and aviation industries.

“That temporariness necessarily allows the real possibility, indeed, the likelihood that at the end of the suspension period, there may be a reinstatement of the lockout which, on the evidence before the tribunal, would inevitably lead to the risk, if not likelihood, of significant damage to an important sector of the Australian economy,” Howe told the judges.

Qantas’ lawyer Frank Parry told the court the airline “may conclude that it cannot return to the air” if the court opts for a suspension rather than a termination.

But the pilots’ union lawyer Arthur Moses accused Qantas of making an “implied threat” to the judges that only a termination would ensure that the fleet would not remain grounded. Moses said no Qantas witness had given evidence to back that submission.

But Joyce said outside court Sunday that a suspension order might not lead to the the airline flying again.

“A termination stops the lock out, but we have to make a decision about putting the airline back in the air,” Joyce told Sky News television.

“A suspension may not necessarily mean the airline gets back in the air,” he added.

“If it’s a suspension, we cannot put the planes back in the air without having certainty,” he said, without elaborating.

Moses said Qantas had made no submissions in court on “what a suspension could look like that would give Qantas certainty” and noted that Joyce had not given evidence.

Qantas executive Lyell Strambi testified that suspending the staff lockout for three months could endanger aircraft safety because the crews might be distracted, tired or angry.

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

Another Qantas executive Vanessa Hudson testified that the airline’s forward bookings had collapsed after 70,000 passengers had had their flights disrupted by unions’ rolling four-hour strikes in recent weeks.

She said a permanent order would give customers enough certainty to book Qantas flights.

“As long as there’s the continued threat that industrial activity could return, I think that it will be impacting consumers’ decisions about which airline they choose to fly,” she said.

The unions’ lawyers asked for suspensions, which would leave the option open of future strikes.

Qantas said 108 airplanes were grounded but did not say how many flights were involved. Among the stranded passengers are 17 world leaders attending a Commonwealth summit in Perth, and the Australian government was helping to get them home.

Joyce said the unions’ actions had created a crisis for Qantas, trashing the brand and could shut it down piece by piece.

Qantas is among the most profitable airlines in the world, but he estimated the grounding would cost the carrier $20 million a day.

The grounding of the largest of Australia’s four national domestic airlines will take a major economic toll and could disrupt the national Parliament, due to resume in Canberra on Tuesday after a two-week recess. Qantas’ budget subsidiary Jetstar continues to fly.

The aircraft will be grounded until unions representing pilots, mechanics, baggage handlers and caterers reach agreements with Qantas over pay and conditions, Joyce said. Staff will not be paid starting Monday.

Qantas infuriated unions in August when it said it would improve its loss-making overseas business by creating an Asia-based airline with its own name and brand. The five-year restructure plan will cost 1,000 jobs.

Qantas said in August it had more than doubled annual profit to AU$250 million but warned that the business environment was too challenging to forecast earnings for the current fiscal year.

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Associated Press writers Christopher Weber in Los Angeles, Katie Oyan in Phoenix and Alex Kennedy in Singapore and AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS in 3rd paragraph that government prefers permanent rather than temporary order.)

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – A snowstorm with a ferocity more familiar in February than October socked the Northeast over the weekend, knocking out power to 2.7 million, snarling air and highway travel and dumping more than 2 feet of snow in a few spots as it slowly moved north out of New England. Officials warned it could be days before many see electricity restored.

The combination of heavy, wet snow, leaf-laden trees and frigid, gusting winds brought down limbs and power lines. At least three deaths were blamed on the weather, and states of emergency were declared in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and parts of New York.

The 750,000 who lost power in Connecticut broke a record for the state that was set when the remnants of Hurricane Irene hit the state in August. People could be without electricity for as long as a week, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Sunday.

“If you are without power, you should expect to be without power for a prolonged period of time,” he said Saturday night.

The storm worsened as it moved north, and communities in western Massachusetts were among the hardest hit. Snowfall totals topped 27 inches in Plainfield, and nearby Windsor had gotten 26 inches by early Sunday.

“It’s a little startling. I mean, it’s only October,” said Craig Brodur, who was playing keno with a friend at Northampton Convenience in western Massachusetts.

Along the coast and in such cities as Boston, relatively warm water temperatures helped keep snowfall totals much lower. Washington received a trace of snow, tying a 1925 record for the date. New York City’s Central Park set a record for both the date and the month of October with 1.3 inches of snow.

Some inland towns got more than a foot of snow. West Milford, N.J., about 45 miles northwest of New York City, saw 19 inches by early Sunday.

New Jersey’s largest electric and gas utility, PSE&G, warned customers to prepare for “potentially lengthy outages” and advised power might not be fully restored until Wednesday. More than 600,000 lost electricity in the state, including Gov. Chris Christie.

The storm came on a busy weekend for many, with trick-or-treaters going door-to-door in search of Halloween booty, hunting season opening in some states and a full slate of college and pro football scheduled.

More than 22 inches fell in New Hampshire’s capital of Concord, weeks ahead of the usual first measurable snowfall.

Elsewhere in northern New England, the unofficial arrival of winter was a boon for some. Two Vermont ski resorts, Killington and Mount Snow, started the ski season early by opening one trail each over the weekend, and Maine’s Sunday River ski resort also opened for the weekend.

The severity of the storm caught many by surprise.

“This is absolutely a lot more snow than I expected to see today. I can’t believe it’s not even Halloween and it’s snowing already,” Carole Shepherd of Washington Township, N.J., said after shoveling her driveway.

Residents were urged to avoid travel altogether. Speed limits were reduced on bridges between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. A few roads closed because of accidents and downed trees and power lines, and more were expected, said Sean Brown, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

Two of the airports serving New York City, Newark Liberty and Kennedy, had hours-long delays Saturday, as did Philadelphia’s airport. Amtrak suspended service between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pa., and commuter trains in Connecticut and New York were delayed or suspended because of downed trees and signal problems.

Philadelphia saw mostly rain, but the snow that did fall coated downtown roofs in white.

In southeastern Pennsylvania, an 84-year-old man was killed when a snow-laden tree fell on his home while he was napping in his recliner. In Connecticut, the governor said one person died in a Colchester traffic accident that he blamed on slippery conditions.

And a 20-year-old man in Springfield, Mass., stopped when he saw police and firefighters examining downed wires and stepped in the wrong place and was electrocuted, Capt. William Collins said.

Parts of New York saw a mix of snow, rain and slush that made for sheer misery at the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City, where drenched protesters hunkered down in tents and under tarps as the plaza filled with rainwater and melted snow.

Technically, tents are banned in the park, but protesters say authorities have been looking the other way, even despite a crackdown on generators that were keeping them warm.

Nick Lemmin, 25, of Brooklyn, was spending his first night at the encampment. He was one of a handful of protesters still at the park early Sunday.

“I had to come out and support,” he said. “The underlying importance of this is such that you have to weather the cold.”

Adash Daniel, 24, is a protester who had been at the park for three weeks. He had a sleeping bag and cot that he was going to set up, but changed his mind.

“I’m not much good to this movement if I’m shivering,” he said as he left the park.

October snowfall is rare in New York, and Saturday marked just the fourth October day with measurable snowfall in Central Park since record-keeping began 135 years ago, the National Weather Service said.

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Associated Press writers Ron Todt in Philadelphia; David B. Caruso and Colleen Long in New York; Jay Lindsay in Boston; Eric Tucker in Washington; Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, N.J.; and Clarke Canfield in Portland, Maine, contributed to this report.