Aer Lingus pilots continue to be balloted on possible strike action over proposed redundancies.
The pilots, members of the IMPACT union, are seeking the removal of a cap on redundancy payments and have threatened to strike unless demands are met.
The airline is seeking 80 redundancies, and 10 junior pilots have already been served with redundancy notices as part of the airline's survival plan.
More than 300 pilots attended a three-hour meeting at Dublin airport last night where the decision to ballot was passed overwhelmingly in a show of hands. formal ballot is now being conducted and is expected to take a week to complete.
Notice would be given if strike action was planned, the union said. After that, a minimum of seven days' notice must be given before any action can be taken. That gives at least two weeks for both sides to reach an agreement before this dispute escalates any further.
Many staff at the national airline were offered voluntary severance packages under the survival plan, which was issued last October to keep Aer Lingus afloat.
This offered four weeks' pay per year, up to a total of two years' pay, and was available to pilots with less than 10 years of service.
Pilots who had been with the company for more than 20 years and were above the age of 48 were offered a lump sum of €63,500. But the union claimed the lump sum represented a worse deal than the voluntary severance package.
PA