On Tuesday, however, 12 of the Indonesians, responding to an immigration agency order, appeared at the Newark office.
The F.A.A. said American failed to follow an agency order, called an Airworthiness Directive, dating from 2006, that required airlines to inspect how some wires were bundled on the wheel wells of their McDonnell Douglas MD-80 planes.
But the couple bringing the case, Michael and Chantell Sackett, argued that they should be able to ask a court to rule immediately on an agency order that carries with it the threat of fines of $75,000 a day.
His mention of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is a hint that he was ordered to do something — one of the only ways a case can go directly to a Court of Appeals is to challenge an agency order.
The S.E.C. has announced that Orlando Joseph Jett, once a bond-trading star, lost his appeal of an agency order that he disgorge $8.2 million in bonuses rewarded in connection with a fraudulent trading scheme and that he pay a $200,000 civil penalty.
The situation in the field had become "unpredictable, unstable and dangerous," according to the agency order.
