Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has thrown down the gauntlet on union strikes by grounding 108 domestic and long-haul aircraft effective at 5pm on 29-Oct-2011.

"I'm taking an unbelievable decision to ground this airline," Mr Joyce said in Sydney. He says Qantas is forced to ground its fleet after locking out employees members of the ALAEA, TWU, and AIPA unions from 8pm 31-Oct-2011. These unions fly and maintain Qantas aircraft. "This is a very tense environment. Individual reactions to this lock-put may be unpredictable," Mr Joyce said at a press briefing in Sydney. Mr Joyce said the grounding, an extreme scare tactic, would go on for as long as it takes for unions come to terms – but expectations are the unions will quickly settle.

"This course of action has been forced upon us by the extreme and damaging course chosen by the leaders of the three unions. It is now over to them. The ball is in their court. They must decide just how badly they want to hurt Qantas," Mr Joyce said.

The remarkable step is almost unprecedented in Australian aviation history - the previous wholescale dispute, when Australia's pilots withdrew their services, occurred some 23 years ago, resulting in the closure of all large scale commercial operations for an extended period. At that time, military transport aircraft and foreign airlines were used to maintain a skeletal system in a dispute that lasted for weeks and resulted in almost a halving of the number of pilots eventually re-hired by the airlines.