Mr Dixon said yesterday that there would be no meetings with union representatives as long as the threat of industrial action hung over his airline.

"And you can quote me on that," he said. Qantas looks set for another week of turbulence as it cuts more flights and continues its battle with the unions. Eighteen Qantas flights were cancelled last week after the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association held stopwork meetings in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

The union, pushing for a 5 per cent pay rise for 1500 Qantas engineers, has flagged the prospect of further industrial action.

Officials were due to meet at the weekend to decide whether further action would be taken and have warned they could bring the airline to a halt.

The meetings came as ACTU president Sharan Burrow wrote to Mr Dixon last week asking for talks to resume.

But with high oil prices forcing another European airline, Silverjet, into administration last week and at least one small Australian carrier believed to be in trouble, Mr Dixon is in no mood to negotiate.

He has indicated he is prepared to take the dispute to the wire rather than concede to the engineers' 5 per cent pay claim instead of an original deal of 3 per cent plus an additional 1 per cent in superannuation.

The airline will also be announcing further cuts to flights, this time with international routes in the spotlight.

Executives are expected as early as today to finalise cuts to international routes that are struggling to make money with jet fuel prices at current high levels. Qantas has not given any indication of which flights will be cut but analysts have suggested its Japanese routes may be vulnerable.

The airline announced last week that it was grounding planes, cutting underperforming domestic routes, cutting jobs and freezing executive pay as it faced a $2 billion blowout in fuel costs in the coming financial year. Soaring fuel costs will be a hot topic as the world's top airline executives meet today in Istanbul for the annual meeting of the International Air Transport Association.

The latest IATA statistics for April show that the combination of high fuel prices and economic problems in the US and Europe is continuing to slow growth.

"The impact of skyrocketing oil prices and weaker economies has made its way through to traffic growth," said IATA director general Giovanni Bisignani, adding that the industry outlook was "grim at best".

by Steve Creedy | SOURCE | The Australian