Qantas Airways, Australia's biggest carrier, said it would cut almost 400 domestic flights affecting 60,000 passengers for the next month as a result of labour union strikes.
Bans on overtime by engineers caused a backlog of maintenance and forced the grounding of five aircraft from next week, Qantas said.
While a planned four-hour strike in Adelaide and one-hour stoppages in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide have been postponed for two weeks, this "will not help get these five grounded aircraft back up in the air", said Qantas spokeswoman Olivia Wirth.
Workers from the airline's engineering, long-haul pilots and ground crew unions have held strikes, used public address systems to criticise Qantas and banned overtime as they seek higher pay and job security clauses in contracts.
The union action comes amid chief executive Alan Joyce's plans to establish new carriers in Southeast Asia and Japan to tap Chinese travellers as he seeks to turn around A$200 million ($257 million) in annual losses from international operations.
