Threats to "slash tyres" posted on a website set up to allow Ryanair pilots based across Europe communicate with each other were removed within 90 minutes by the site's operators, the High Court was told yesterday.

The threats were made in 2004 at a time when the court heard there was concern among pilots in Dublin about the circumstances in which pilots were being asked by the airline to relocate to Dublin to operate new 737-800 aircraft.

One of the co-ordinators of the Ryanair European Pilots' Association (Repa) website, Trevor Phillips, told the court yesterday that he did not believe the posting relating to slashing tyres on the web made in December 2004 was a serious suggestion.

He said the posting was inappropriate and the pilots' unions were against threats and intimidation.

In his opinion, the person who made the posting was unhappy in their job and did it in a moment of "stress and fatigue", he said.

He told Richard Nesbitt SC, for Ryanair, that he would have been reluctant to provide website users' identities to the police but, if those identities were demanded, they would have provided them, insofar as that was possible.

He said they had left postings on the site that expressed pilots' frustration.

They did not believe the site should be "anodyne or bland", but it should not be "scurrilous".

Mr Philips was giving evidence on the fifth day of proceedings in which Ryanair is seeking to identify persons engaged in communications on the website which, it claims, show evidence of wrongful activity against Ryanair and its employees.

The action is against Neil Johnston, an official with the trade union Impact, the Irish Airline Pilots' Association (Ialpa) and its British counterpart, Balpa.

Ryanair claims the defendants have a duty to name the persons identified by the codenames "ihateryanair", "cantfy-wontfly" and others on the Repa website which, it claims, was established by and is controlled by Ialpa and Balpa. Both defendants deny that claim.

The case continues today.