The Labour Court has invited both sides in the Aer Lingus dispute to talks on Monday morning to try to avert next Thursday's threatened stoppage.
Because SIPTU plans to resume strike action ahead of the Easter bank holiday, the effective opportunity for talks is only four days, as the company will have to begin advising customers of cancelled flights by Tuesday evening.
A special Aer Lingus board meeting is planned for Monday to review the situation. The pay dispute with SIPTU has already cost the company two full days of business at a cost of between £4 million and £6 million.
A full schedule of flights is planned for today, as SIPTU's 3,000 ground staff members resume work. Yesterday 160 flights were cancelled, leaving 17,000 passengers stranded.
Only 14 inbound flights operated during the stoppage. Seven were from North America, five from Britain and one each from Paris and Amsterdam. Two Iberia flights and one each by Crossair, Sabena and Tyrolean airlines were cancelled because they rely on Aer Lingus for baggage-handling.
The director of corporate affairs at Aer Lingus, Mr Dan Loughrey, thanked customers for their patience during yesterday's disruption. "Today's action has served only to hurt Aer Lingus and especially our customers," he said.
"With competitiveness at the airline already under serious threat as a result of the impact on travel of the foot-and-mouth outbreak, and costs rising as a result of already agreed pay settlements, disrupting thousands of customers unnecessarily is senseless."
Aer Lingus remained "committed to engaging in talks to find a resolution . . . and we continue to be available to enter meaningful discussions in order to resolve the issues and avoid further unnecessary inconvenience to our customers".
Last night, SIPTU's vice-president, Mr Jack O'Connor, accused senior management in Aer Lingus of acting in bad faith.
"Last November and December, Aer Lingus management made it emphatically clear that any pay increases over and above those proposed by the Labour Court [to ground staff] would jeopardise the viability of the airline", he said.
"We took this in good faith, but we also made it clear that settlement was conditional on all groups being treated equitably in terms of pay and productivity. We also made it clear that, if this did not happen, we would submit a claim seeking the same terms for our staff."
He went on to say that, within weeks of this agreement, Aer Lingus had gone on to concede "more favourable terms to another group [cabin crew]".
He maintained that the management had acted out of "sheer expediency". This problem would now have to be resolved before good relations could be restored.