Back in business, Joyce says

Qantas will be returning to "business as usual" over the next 24 hours, says the airline's CEO Alan Joyce.

Speaking at a press conference in Sydney on Monday, Mr Joyce said he had every confidence in the Fair Work Australia (FWA) process.

"It is a fair, reasonable and rational process, all parties will be treated equally," Mr Joyce told reporters.

"We have every confidence in the process."

Mr Joyce said international and domestic flights would start resuming from Monday afternoon.

"The important thing is that all industrial action is now over and we have certainty.

"Certainty for the employees, certainty for our customers and certainty for our shareholders," he said.

"We will be returning to business as usual over the next 24 hours."

Mr Joyce said Qantas would have four supplementary international services ready to go by this afternoon.

"This will be a safe and phased approach," he said.

"We will be doing all that we can to put things right."

I HAD NO CHOICE: JOYCE

Mr Joyce rejected the suggestion he could have avoided grounding Qantas' entire fleet on Saturday, due to the standoff with unions, by taking the matter directly to the industrial umpire.

"There wasn't sufficient impact on the national interest for that to be successful, that was our advice," he said.

Mr Joyce said he had no option but to ground all Qantas planes.

"It was the only way we could bring it to a head," he said, adding that the airline had advised various ministers the situation couldn't continue.

"We made it clear that our options and financial position was such that this could not continue," he said.

All industrial action between Qantas and unions was terminated by Fair Work Australia in a marathon hearing that ended early on Monday.

Parties have been given 21 days to resolve their differences.

Alan Milne, head of Qantas' integrated operations centre, says services will be able to restart as soon as the airline's safety case has approval from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA).

"It's a bit of testament to the engineers on the floor that they have managed to keep the aircraft as stable and in ready-to-go condition during this phase," he told reporters in Sydney.

"Aircraft and passengers that are currently in international ports will be ready to go as soon as we do get this permission and we will launch those flights as soon as possible."

Mr Milne said it had been a pretty difficult weekend for a lot of Qantas' operational staff and he praised them for doing an "exceptional job".

Mr Joyce again apologised to all Qantas customers, adding he felt the Qantas brand would recover.

"We have the business leaders' support behind us," he said.

"We will continue to get the backing of any Australian government because Qantas is so important...

"Qantas has a big national interest and a big impact on the economy, it has the support of the states and territories."

Mr Joyce said the FWA ruling had put "balance back into the negotiations".

"Customers can now make with confidence a decision to fly with Qantas," he said.

"I have every confidence that we will recover back to a 65 per cent domestic market share and recover internationally."

JOB LOSSES? DON'T WORRY: JOYCE

Mr Joyce says the future for Qantas lies in participating in Asia and negotiations won't restrict the airline from setting up an Asian carrier.

"An Asian carrier will not cost one Australian job," he said.

Mr Joyce said Qantas hadn't asked the government to intervene in its standoff with the unions.

"We didn't call on the government or Julia Gillard to intervene. The unions didn't call on them to intervene," he said.

"We have to work within the parameters of FWA ... we felt we had to bring this to a head ... to take our own action which was a lockout action that we did."

Mr Milne said staff were informed of Qantas' plans to lock out workers just before 5pm (AEDT) on Saturday.

"If there were opportunities to organise it better we would have, but unfortunately there wasn't," he said.

He said 22,000 international passengers were stranded overseas and it was hoped the backlog could be cleared within 24 hours.