Employees of TEAM, the aircraft maintenance subsidiary of Aer Lingus, will receive correspondence today confirming the Aer Lingus offer of £54.5 million to buy out their letters of guarantee and other rights enjoyed by them.

The deal works out at an average of £36,000 per employee, although some will get considerably more and others less.

Employees will have two weeks to consider the offers and the company will write again, asking them to complete acceptance forms. A further week has been set aside for this process.

If accepted, the move will clear the way for FLS Industries, a Danish conglomerate to buy TEAM for a figure believed to be approaching £30 million. FLS published its annual results for 1997 yesterday, posting a rise in pre-tax profits of almost 167 million Danish krone (£17.5 million) compared to 1996.