Morphological and ion time-of-flight (TOF) investigations of the laser-induced sputtering of crystalline Al2O3 ("sapphire") at 800 nm have been carried out as a function of the laser fluence, pulse duration and the number of pulses per site. The changes in the morphology of the irradiated surface, the ion signal, and the ion plume angular distribution are correlated to obtain more insight into the two different etch-phases observed for Al2O3