A federal judge yesterday said he was initially inclined to deny US Airways' request that he stay an order that favored the machinists union in a subcontracing dispute.

But U.S. District Court Judge Robert Cindrich did not immediately rule on the request that he stay the decision he made Tuesday prohibiting the carrier from subcontracting heavy maintenance work on Airbus narrow-body jets to an Alabama company pending an appeal.

The airline and the International Association of Machinists, which represents about 5,000 US Airways mechanics, presented opposing views in his courtroom yesterday, and participants believe Cindrich may decide as early as this morning,

US Airways attorney Robert Siegel said the airline could not rehire a few hundred laid-off union mechanics or find a space in which to do the government-required maintenance before an expedited appeal would be heard by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

He also argued that failing to complete maintenance already begun by the contractor, Mobile Aerospace Engineering, of Mobile, Ala., would lead the airline to take planes out of service during the upcoming busy holiday season.

"The truth is this injunction will help no one. We are not telling stories,'' Siegel told Cindrich, who issued the injunction at the request of the IAM, which contended the work belonged to its members under their contract.

At one point in the proceedings, Cindrich said that for him to grant the stay would create a "disincentive" for the airline to bargain with the union over the issue. Siegel disagreed.

The IAM sought the court's help after US Airways earlier this month announced it planned to subcontract heavy maintenance on an initial 10 jets because it lacked the facilities and equipment to do the work. One jet is already in pieces at Mobile's facility.

The union argued that the potential crisis described by Siegel was of the airline's own making and its failure to plan and that to grant a stay would basically give management what it is seeking in the appeal -- permission for the contractor to finish work on the 10 Airbus jets it has agreed to send to Mobile.

David Neigus, associate general counsel of the IAM, said the airline has made no plans to do its own Airbus heavy maintenance even though it has had opportunity to do so. "The fact is the company doesn't want to do it,'' he said.

The long-term stakes are higher than 10 jets. There are more than 100 other Airbus planes that must eventually go through the same heavy maintenance program.

Outside the courtroom, Frank Schifano, president of Pittsburgh IAM local Lodge 1976, said he thought the process of rehiring laid-off mechanics could be done much more quickly than the company claims and that room for the work could be found in Pittsburgh or Charlotte, N.C., the airline's other main maintenance center. Siegel has said the work, if space could be found, would be done elsewhere.