The chief executives of Qantas, the Australia's biggest airline, and British Airways, on Monday reiterated that there was no chance of resurrecting the failed merger between the both airlines.

Qantas Airways chief executive Alan Joyce said the airline is not looking at any specific mergers at the moment.

''There are no plans to restart merger talks with British Airways after the talks fell apart earlier this year,'' he said on the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association general meeting in Kuala Lumpur.

British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh also said the deal is now dead.

"It was a very interesting proposal to look at, at the time, but there's no prospect I see of that being reopened," he said.

In December 2008, the airlines had entered in to a $8-billion merger talks, but scrapped it within weeks as the two companies could not converge on the size of their stakes in the combined group that would have resulted from the merger. Reports said the talks fell through on account of Qantas' insistence for a 55-per cent stake in the new company, to which BA would not agree. (See: Dispute on stake ownership led to collpse of BA-Qantas merger talks). 

Qantas also said it has no plans to cut more capacity from its flight network.

''At the moment, the capacity changes we've introduced are sufficient enough,'' he said.

''We're conscious of the ability to grow if things do get better.''

The Sydney-based airline has slashed jobs, grounded planes and forecast a record second-half loss as the global recession erodes travel demand.

Qantas' discount carrier Jetstar is cutting about a third of services to Japan and is reviewing future capacity because of the slump, which Joyce said was the worst ever.

The airline will ground the equivalent of 10 aircraft, reducing flying capacity 5 per cent, it said in April.

Joyce had earlier told reporters at the IATA conference that the airline was looking at a range of options for handling the economic crisis.

"People are talking about the premium market," he said. "We've seen the premium market in the past, in recession, go through a decline but it does come back.''

"We do see, from our perspective, a number of different scenarios going forward and I keep saying if we've got 10 economists in the room we have 10 different views of what's going to happen."

Joyce said due to swine flu Jetstar had cancelled about 30 per cent of its scheduled flights in the Japanese route.

Airlines worldwide are expected to suffer a combined loss of $9billion in 2009, according to a revised forecast by IATA. This is nearly double the association's March estimate of a $4.7 billion loss, reflecting a rapidly deteriorating revenue environment. IATA also revised its loss estimate for airlines in 2008 to $10.4 billion from the previous estimate of $8.5 billion. (See: Global airline losses to mount to $9 billion in 2009: IATA).

BA suffered an operating loss of 220 million pounds for the year ended 31 March 2009, reversing year-earlier operating profit of 878 million pounds, and it also reported a pre-tax loss of 401 million pounds.

Last year, American Airlines, British Airways and Iberia signed an agreement to cooperate over flights between North America and Europe to help them overcome high fuel costs.

 However, Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic is trying to block the deal and has submitted a filing to the US Department of Transportation. (See: Richard Branson dubs BA, American, Iberia partnership a " monster monopoly").