Aer Lingus has commenced yet another severance programme as its recovery plan is tweaked in advance of a possible sale.

It is thought that the State airline believes an additional 200 workers might take up a package offered on Monday, which is open until the end of the month.

The plan is being introduced as the Government prepares to reassess its options for the airline, whose flotation was abandoned two years ago amid strikes and an economic downturn. With flotation off the agenda, a trade sale or sale of a strategic stake in the airline is considered likely.

With a new "low-cost" strategy effectively bedded down by the airline's chief executive, Mr Willie Walsh, staff have been offered the same terms as 2,100 of their colleagues who left the airline in a similar programme last year.

Designed to bring it from the brink of bankruptcy, that plan was the backbone of a dramatic return to profits last year after heavy losses in 2001.

Yet while unions in the airline have never shied from industrial action, there was a measured response yesterday from workers' representatives.

An official in the pilots' union IMPACT, Mr Michael Landers, said he believed the introduction of the package was "inappropriate".

But Mr Landers also described the deal as a "tidying-up exercise".

"It's not going to fundamentally change structures or change numbers at the airline," he said.

An information notice sent to staff stated that the package was being introduced "in response to continued staff interest" and as part of "ongoing restructuring" in the company.

Day-to-day profits in excess of €45 million are thought to have been earned last year as the airline reversed the steep downturn that followed the September 11th attacks in the United States in 2001.

The company has always described its recovery plan as a work in progress and had said last year that it wanted to strip an additional €130 million from its cost base after a €190 million reduction in the first phase of the plan.

The cost of the redundancy package last year was embraced in an exceptional charge of €104.1 million, although it included aircraft writedowns too.

Individuals familiar with the company were reluctant to quantify the cost of the latest programme in which staff are being offered four weeks' basic pay per completed year of service up to a maximum of 104 weeks.

The airline is expected to approach the Labour Court next month as a pay freeze introduced during the rescue package winds down. Unions are keen to end the freeze.