Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been urged to do more to resolve treating the Qantas dispute, as engineers met with the airline in the hope of a breakthrough.
Flight Centre and online booking agent Webjet have criticised Ms Gillard for calling on the parties to resolve their dispute rather than stepping in herself.
"I am concerned about its impact on Qantas itself, on other businesses and of course on passengers," she told reporters in Queanbeyan on Thursday.
"My message remains to the parties: 'Get around a table and get this fixed'."
Webjet chairman David Clarke said Ms Gillard needed to do more.
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"To tell people to get around the table and sort it out is treating it as if it were a kindergarten staff roster," he told Fairfax Radio on Thursday.
Flight Centre managing director Graham Turner said the government needed to stop unions taking advantage of Qantas.
"It is time for the government to take some positive action," he told ABC Radio.
"The unions are trying to take control of the situation while they've got a friendly government in - it's very damaging."
Meanwhile, Fair Work Australia is mediating closed-door discussions in Melbourne on Thursday afternoon between Qantas and the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association.
As the parties prepared to sit down with the industrial tribunal's senior deputy president Les Kaufman, the association's federal secretary Steve Purvinas said the union would delay its industrial campaign until October 28.
In the morning, he said the union was hopeful of reaching a compromise with Qantas on Thursday, but a few hours later on ABC Radio he described the meeting as a stonewalling exercise.
"Essentially it's just a stonewalling exercise by them where we turn up, we walk away disappointed," he said.
