Irish budget airline Ryanair has put in a formal request to sack its entire workforce in the Netherlands because of the company’s poor economic performance, Dutch pilots union VNV said.

The request is now being studied by the government’s UWV job agency, which has to decide if the redundancy request has been properly argued.

In November, Ryanair closed its base at Eindhoven and dismissed 16 cabin crew at the Dutch airport, where pilots have twice gone on strike this year in protest at changes to their pensions and other benefits.

However, the district court in Den Bosch blocked the airline’s attempt to relocate 16 pilots who were based in Eindhoven after the pilots’ union VNV objected. The court said at the time there was no business case to shut the base and the decision had ‘all the appearance of a sanction following the earlier strikes.’

The court in Den Bosch has ordered the airline to keep paying their salaries and keep their training up to date, but said it had no authority to block the closure of the base.

Ryanair responded by writing to the pilots giving them a choice of relocating voluntarily to another base or being made redundant. The airline has now applied for mass redundancy.