Painted in red across the plane's fuselage -- "EELECT GEORGE W. BUSH," with the ''R'' inadvertently missing, a sign of company president Evelio Alpizar's politics.

This past April the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that "improper maintenance of the left engine by company maintenance personnel'' triggered a sequence of events leading to the crash. It also said the operator and crew exceeded the maximum allowable takeoff weight.

COMPANY GROUNDED

With that plane down, Miami Air Lease had just one aircraft in its fleet, a recently purchased Convair 440 built in 1956. But the FAA had not approved it to fly.

On Aug. 18, 2005, Díaz-Balart wrote to FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey "on behalf of my constituent, Mr. Evelio Alpizar."

Miami Air Lease "has been unable to operate during the past nine months. Any assistance you can provide so that the final approval of the Miami Air Lease aircraft is processed in a timely manner will be greatly appreciated," Díaz-Balart wrote, with a cc to an FAA inspector involved.

"The letter was a standard congressional inquiry that we do on behalf of constituents," said chief of staff Ana Carbonell.

The FAA wrote Díaz-Balart back in September, saying Miami Air Lease had "a major problem producing acceptable manuals to operate their aircraft'' and that even though the manuals had been approved, the company had to show that its plane was ready.

Soon the plane flew again. An FAA spokesman said Díaz-Balart's letter "did not hasten the action."

On Dec. 13, Bristol and Villavicencio were again at the controls. The plane's tag: N41527, the same aircraft Díaz-Balart just wrote about.

At 1:30 a.m., as they flew with a pilot trainee on a cargo flight to Cincinnati, the No. 2 engine suddenly began to vibrate. They were ordered to land at the nearest airport in Vero Beach.

"The lights went out," Bristol said. "We couldn't see anything in the cockpit."

His copilot aimed a flashlight at the instrument panel so Bristol, just turning 30 and the father of a baby girl, could see.

"Being that I could not use my flaps because I had no power, I knew I was going to land at a higher land speed than normal," he later told the FAA. "When I landed, I had no brakes or hydraulic pressure, so I had to use my emergency airbrake system."

"...When we got close to the runway we veered to the right and skipped across the grass and stopped right before a grass ditch. When the airplane stopped, I noticed both sides of the airplane . on fire."

Afraid the grass would fuel the flames, Bristol tried to move the plane to safer ground but couldn't: "I noticed that the steering was broken," he told the FAA.

As the fire raged "out of my control'' on one side, Bristol and his colleagues escaped, and he dialed 911.

After two scares, he has no plan to change vocations. He said he just acquired his own cargo business: "Flying these airplanes is in my blood."