The head of British Airways says he has made a constructive start to meetings with trade unions aimed at ending one of BA's most costly labour disputes in a decade.
"Based on the atmosphere in the meetings today, I believe that all of us now recognise the need to find a negotiated settlement and we all need to work together constructively to achieve that," BA chief executive Mr Rod Eddington told reporters.
"But we all recognise that any other outcome is a bad outcome for all the parties concerned," he added.
BA lost tens of millions of pounds on top of travellers' confidence when a wildcat strike a week ago at Heathrow Airport, its main London hub, forced it to scrap more than 500 flights.
Check-in staff fear that a new shift-monitoring system would lead to changes in shifts, pay and conditions. BA denies this.
Mr Eddington met the Amicus union, the Transport & General Workers Union and the GMB union. The meetings come after talks in front of an independent arbitrator stalled last week.
These unions represent most of the BA check-in staff who walked off the job at Heathrow for about 24 hours from July 18th in a dispute over a new "swipe-card" system designed to monitor shift work.
Amicus assistant general secretary Paul Talbot told reporters that his union was hopeful of making progress, while the GMB said the talks had been held in a "very positive environment."
BA reports first-quarter results on Thursday and some observers have estimated that the dispute might have cost the airline £50 million.
BA, which is heavily in debt, has made the most radical changes over the past two years of any European network carrier, cutting more than 10,000 jobs to help lower its high cost base.
Shares in BA closed down 0.9 per cent at 169 pence.