THE Labor Government is poised to weigh on the crippling dispute between Qantas and unions, with ongoing strikes set to cause Christmas chaos for travellers.
In what looms as a rare government intervention, Labor sounded the warning after another day of industrial actions left thousands more passengers disrupted.

It comes as Qantas cancelled almost 100 services a week and grounded five planes - meaning passengers travelling on domestic flights could have to pay up to $160 more for a return ticket.

The Qantas cuts will remove 60,000 seats from the domestic air travel market in the next month, the Herald Sun reported.

Qantas made the decision for safety reasons, blaming aircraft engineers' union strikes and "go-slows" for causing a backlog of maintenance that forced the airline to ground five jets.

Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson warned the Government would consider intervening - the first time since 1989 when Bob Hawke took action amid pilot strikes, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

"It is about time the parties sat in a room and sorted these issues out," Mr Ferguson said.

"They have a responsibility to think about the broader national interest."


Passengers face weeks of pain as Qantas boss Alan Joyce warned that more planes would be grounded if strikes continued.

"Obviously we've seen the situation is not sustainable where it's going," he said yesterday.

"If the bans continue, then more aircraft will have to be grounded."

Melbourne services to Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, and Hobart are among those cut.

Inbound flights from Sydney and Adelaide will also be reduced, inconveniencing visitors planning to come to Melbourne for the Spring Racing Carnival.

A web-bought return ticket from Melbourne to Sydney, leaving at 7am and returning at 6pm on Monday, cost $709 on Qantas and $544 on Virgin last night.

Virgin Australia said it would ask for extra planes from its alliance partners, Etihad and Air New Zealand, to meet the increased demand.

Jetstar said last night its services over the next week were almost fully booked.

Flight Centre spokesman Haydn Long said competition would suffer as a result of Qantas's cuts.

"It's going to be harder to get the cheapest seats," he said.

"Inevitably those seats sell out fastest. As soon as you know the date you want to travel, book seats, even if it's six months ahead."

Strategic Aviation Solutions chairman Neil Hansford predicted passengers would pay an extra $80 each way on a Sydney-to-Melbourne economy seat.

"You have 15,000 seats on Qantas no longer in the market, and people will be forced to take the remaining seats on Virgin - nearly all of the cheapest seats were sold long ago," he said.

Engineers in Sydney will walk off the job for four hours today, bringing the total number of Qantas passengers disrupted by strike action to more than 60,000. Federal secretary Steve Purvinas said the grounded Qantas aircraft had existing problems.

"It comes as no surprise because it was routine overlooked maintenance that grounded many Ansett aircraft before that airline ran into trouble," he said.

"Qantas don't have enough engineers at home, so they continue to send aircraft offshore for maintenance. Those that come back tend to have more problems than they went away with."

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Are they putting profits ahead of saftey?
THere are not enough engineers because they like other tradies have not been serriously trained here for years.