In late October, a Boeing 737 bearing the unfamiliar insignia of Jet Airways of India rolled into a huge hangar in a remote corner of Orlando International Airport, marking the first day of a second chance for SabreTech Inc.

It had been five months since 110 people died when ValuJet Flight 592 plunged into the Everglades just after takeoff from Miami. The ValuJet investigation now focused on the doomed flight's cargo of dozens of hazardous oxygen generators, which SabreTech workers in Miami had mistakenly labeled as empty.

With business at its Miami center plummeting, and SabreTech a target of investigations by the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI, Orlando would be a crucial fresh start for the aircraft maintenance company.

As SabreTech crews prepared to work on that first Boeing 737, the company's top executives gathered the new employees to stress the intense scrutiny the company would face because of the ValuJet publicity and to repeat their insistence that all work be done by the book.

But a lone whistle-blower's phone call to the FAA warning of a botched repair and a falsified document meant SabreTech's second chance would last less than three months.

By the time it was over, more than a half-dozen employees would be fired or forced to resign; SabreTech would be forced to surrender its FAA license in Orlando, putting 100 people out of work; and the episode would cast a new shadow on SabreTech's performance, as well as the FAA's oversight of the troubled company.

SabreTech officials concede there were problems at the Orlando facility, including falsified records. But they said they fired the employees responsible and said none of the problems presented safety hazards.

Robert D. Griswell, SabreTech vice president and general manager, called the shutdown an overreaction by the FAA.

"I don't see anything that would warrant the action taken here," Griswell said. "We have not done slipshod work in this facility."

The future of SabreTech's Orlando operation - where the company expected to grow to 500 employees within five years - is uncertain. The company, which surrendered the license for its Miami operation in January and now faces FAA investigations of its facilities in Arizona and Texas, has said it will ask the FAA to allow it to reopen in Orlando, but has not done so yet.

Work hasn't stopped

Meanwhile, the shutdown of SabreTech raised as many questions as it answered.

Was SabreTech as safe as company officials and employees insist or as dangerous as a whistle-blower who alerted the FAA charges? If SabreTech was unsafe, why did it take the FAA nearly two months after the whistle-blower's first warnings to shut down the company?

Even the "shutdown" itself has not actually stopped work at the SabreTech hangar on Tradeport Drive on the west side of Orlando International.

With two Boeing 727s in the midst of major repairs when the FAA ultimatum came, the agency allowed SabreTech to hire another contractor, SMART Inc., to complete the work. That contractor in turn hired contract employees to do the work - all of them the same former SabreTech employees idled by the shutdown, who now wear T-shirts printed with the new contractor's name.

FAA officials would not discuss the allegations against SabreTech or answer questions about the FAA's actions in its investigation of the company.

The toughest question posed by the events at SabreTech is largely rhetorical: Why, at a time when the company was under intense scrutiny, when its reputation and future were threatened by the carelessness uncovered by the ValuJet investigation, would workers violate one of the basic precepts of aviation maintenance in what Griswell conceded was "the blink of an eye."

"That is a direct violation of everything we believe here," Griswell said of the falsification. "I just don't understand it either."

Start of the problems

It was just three days after the first jetliner pulled into the hangar, said SabreTech mechanic David A. Jordan, that the new beginning heralded by company officials began to fall apart.

That day, Jordan later told FAA officials in a sworn statement, he was assigned to lubricate the fan blades of the 737's right engine. But SabreTech lacked the equipment specified by Boeing to perform the four-hour job - including special protective mats, sponges, brushes and lubricant.

Jordan, 31, is a Deltona resident who had spent four years as a space shuttle technician and another four working on F-15 fighters and top-secret F-117 stealth fighters for the U.S. Air Force. It was his first job in commercial aviation.

"How am I going to do this job without the right materials?" Jordan said he asked a supervisor. "He thought about it for a minute, then he said, 'These engines just came out of overhaul a few hours ago. This doesn't need to be done. Go ahead and sign it off.' "

A second mechanic falsified the record for the left engine, Jordan and company officials said.

A company inspector signed off on the work without verifying that it had been done.

Griswell said the company "could not substantiate" Jordan's claim that the supervisor ordered the falsification. But the supervisor, who Griswell said at the least allowed the falsification, was later fired along with the others.

Work was 'a joke'

Jordan said he immediately regretted what he had done.

"I did it, but from then on there was no way it (the jet) was making it out of that hangar without the FAA knowing about this," Jordan said.

A week later, Jordan was assigned to replace a probe in the same engine. A small metal fitting in the engine's intake, the probe feeds data to the engine's control unit.

Jordan removed the probe, but when a SabreTech machinist straightened it, the two pieces of the probe "disbonded." Jordan said a supervisor told him to reattach the two pieces and reinstall the probe, but Jordan objected.

FAA regulations require mechanics to cite in their paperwork the reference in the appropriate technical manual that authorizes any repair.

"They didn't have any technical reference for what they wanted me to do," Jordan said. Another supervisor insisted Jordan do the work, he said.

Jordan called the result "a joke."

"If you touched the probe, the parts jingled," he said. "I'd call it half-assed, but it wasn't even half."