Qantas maintenance engineers have voted in favour of a strike.

The news came on Thursday as the results of a fresh postal ballot showed that some 80% of the Australian carrier’s engineers said they would back industrial action over the next two months should current negotiations over workplace conditions prove fruitless. According to Qantas, just over half of its maintenance engineers participated in the ballot.

Should strikes take place, it would be the second time in three years in which the global airline’s engineers have turned to industrial action. The previous stint in 2008 with the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Associatio caused a loss of AU $130 million and extensive delays for passengers.

General Secretary for the union Steve Purvinas called the ballot results a ‘wake-up call’ for Qantas management and said the hopefully it would make the airline understand that current negotiations need to move to the next level. A Qantas spokesperson has since responded by saying that the firm would continue to negotiate and that it wanted to avoid strikes that could cause major headaches for both business travellers and holidaymakers.

The dispute began last year when the workplace agreement between engineers and the airline expired. Since then a potential deal between the two entities hasn’t yet been agreed upon, which prompted the strike ballot.