Valujet

With the nation's airlines farming out an increasing amount of maintenance work, the Federal Aviation Administration is struggling to monitor an intricate web of contractors that stretches around the world.Before deregulation of the industry in 1978, airlines did most of their work themselves, making it relatively simple for regulators to examine records and aircraft to ensure that procedures were being followed properly.But now that task is far more complicated than experts predicted even five years ago.U.

ATLANTA -- ValuJet Inc. and its top executives are named in a lawsuit by three shareholders who say the company issued false assurances that its planes were safe.The ValuJet shareholders, seeking class-action status, filed the lawsuit yesterday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta against the Atlanta-based airline, Chairman Robert Priddy, President Lewis Jordan, Vice Chairman Maurice Gallagher and Chief Financial Officer Stephen Nevin.ValuJet already is the subject of lawsuits from several families of the 110 passengers who were killed May 11 when a ValuJet plane crashed in the Florida Everglades, leaving no survivors.

MIAMI -- Calling it "the most difficult task we've had to deal with in modern times," Dade County's medical examiner announced yesterday that coroners have identified the remains of eight people killed in the crash of ValuJet Flight 592.The clues: tattoos, teeth, fingerprints, tell-tale scars, scraps of 22 clothing -- all on mere fragments of human bodies. All eight victims were adults; the remains of some children are being examined."I'm very hopeful that we'll have more identities forthcoming," said Dr. Roger Mittleman, Dade's medical examiner.

ATLANTA -- ValuJet Inc. said yesterday that it may fire some employees as a result of increasing expenses in the wake of the crash of one of its planes, but said it would consider voluntary leaves of absence first."

ATLANTA -- ValuJet Inc.'s senior management said yesterday that the company is recovering after the crash of one of its planes, but probably won't return to its full schedule until at least year-end.The no-frills airline, which has halved the number of its daily flights to 160 from 320, said it may have to cut more flights and won't resume the suspended ones for at least several weeks. ValuJet may delay delivery of its six new jetliners as well."We have stabilized our situation," said Robert Priddy, ValuJet chairman and co-founder, in a conference call with investors.

MIAMI -- The quest for clues in the primordial muck goes high-technology today.Metro-Dade divers plan to descend for the first time into the crater gouged in the Everglades by ValuJet Flight 592.Eleven days into one of the most challenging investigations in aviation history, searchers are reaching into the bottoms of their tool boxes."

MIAMI -- With the help of a workhorse helicopter, investigators waged a macabre tug-of-war with the Everglades muck yesterday, yanking out bigger and bigger chunks of the fallen ValuJet DC-9, including parts of the fuselage, wings and landing gear.These new pieces, along with the two engines pulled from the mud around dawn, will help accident reconstructionists assemble a two-dimensional model of the jetliner, now taking shape inside a hangar at Tamiami Airport.The effort was as remarkable for what the huge Hi-Lift chopper pulled out as it was for what it failed to dislodge from the oozing peat below: One big section of either a wing or a fuselage was so deeply embedded in the muck that "we couldn't get ahold of it," said Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

MIAMI -- For days, many people thought Michael Howard was killed in the crash of ValuJet Flight 592.But he is alive, and a friend is dead, his name absent from the official list of crash victims.Howard used his identification to buy his friend, Sean Baker, a ticket on Flight 592 because his friend did not have his drivers license with him, Howard said late Wednesday.When the plane crashed and the passenger list was released, it had Howard's name on the list, not Baker's.Baker, 29, was a professional musician who lived in College Park, Ga.On Saturday, he was headed back to Atlanta after a week of visiting his mother, Barbara Baker, who lives in Miami.

WASHINGTON -- The Transportation Department's inspector general announced yesterday that she will investigate suggestions that inspectors for the Federal Aviation Administration have been pressured to go easy on ValuJet despite previous concerns about the airline's safety record.The inspector general, Mary Fackler Schiavo, said "a number of claims have come up that inspectors were pressured" to soften their reports on ValuJet's performance. "Obviously, we will investigate that," she said.

THERE IS IRONY as well as mystery in the crash Saturday of a ValuJet Airlines DC-9 that plunged into the Everglades swamp, killing 109 people. The three-year-old, discount-price airline had a special safety inspection in February by the Federal Aviation Administration, had reportedly implemented regulators' recommendations and was set for a follow-up inspection this month. It was under close federal scrutiny for three earlier runway accidents, none fatal.The captain on the Miami-to-Atlanta flight had 9,000 hours of flying time, considerable experience for a 35-year-old pilot.