Qantas, one of the world's biggest airlines, is expected to resume normal operations on Tuesday after Australia's national labour relations tribunal ended its lockout of employees, which had stranded thousands of passengers all over the world.

CEO Alan Joyce said the first of the grounded aircraft would return to the sky early Monday afternoon.

A labour tribunal, Fair Work Australia, made the decision to end the grounding of planes, as well as strikes by unionized workers at Qantas, on the second day of the escalated labour dispute, which saw the company cancel flights around the globe.

Joyce praised the outcome, which prevents unions from taking any further strike action over their demands for pay hikes and job security clauses under new contracts being negotiated. The strikes have been blamed for a sharp decline in the airline's future bookings.

"The important thing is that all industrial action is now over and we have certainty," Joyce told reporters in Sydney.

Stoppage cost $20M a day

Earlier Sunday, Joyce released a statement apologizing to all customers affected by the dispute and indicated some flights could be back up and running in a few hours if the Australian national safety regulator gives the go ahead.

Qantas said it was trying to force an end to weeks of rolling work stoppages by unionized pilots, engineers and ground staff.

The government took the matter to the tribunal seeking an end to the disputes between Qantas and three of its unions. The unions had been hoping for the tribunal to suspend the lockout so that their strikes could resume if negotiations fail.

"We should do what we can to avoid significant damage to the tourism industry," said Justice Geoffrey Giudice after hearing 14 hours of evidence.

The ruling means that all parties have 21 days to negotiate a settlement to the dispute.

Grounding the entire fleet was costing the airline an estimated $20 million a day and had hampered a summit of Commonwealth leaders in Perth, Australia.

Qantas carries about 70,000 passengers per day and many of them were left stranded at airports around the world.

The iconic Australian airline locked out 35,000 employees and shut down operations on Saturday morning. The decision to ground the domestic and international fleet took thousands of travellers by surprise, including many who were close to boarding Qantas aircraft or already on planes that were about to take off.

"I think it was unnecessary and extreme," Woodward told CBC News. "It was an extraordinary action that has probably damaged the airline significantly."

Qantas said 108 airplanes were grounded at 22 airports, but did not say how many flights were involved. Among the stranded passengers were 17 world leaders attending the Commonwealth summit, which has ended in Perth. The Australian government was helping to get them home.

Booked passengers were being rescheduled on a 24-hour basis, with Qantas handling any costs in transferring bookings to other airlines, said Qantas spokesman Tom Woodward.

Workers have been staging rolling strikes and refusing overtime work for weeks out of worry that some of Qantas' jobs would be moved overseas in a restructuring plan. In August the airline, which had more than doubled its annual profit this year to $265 million, said it was considering an Asia-based unit with its own name and brand — a move that would cost 1,000 jobs in Australia.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the dispute had to end because of the damage it's doing to the country's economy.

With files from The Associated Press