WASHINGTON (AP) – Federal aviation officials said they expect government investigators to show at a congressional hearing next week that a new kind of small, light jet was certified for flight despite safety concerns by some engineers and pilots testing the plane.

Federal Aviation Administration employees who worked on the flight certification of the Eclipse 500 very light jet are expected to testify that they felt pressured to move forward with certification despite safety concerns, FAA and labor union officials said.

The certification of the Eclipse 500 is the focus of investigations by Department of Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel and the House Transportation committee. The National Transportation Safety Board is also examining an incident earlier this year in which the engines of an Eclipse 500 became stuck at full power during a landing attempt in Chicago.

The FAA expects next week’s hearing will show that “there were employees who felt their safety concerns were not addressed,” said Lynn Tierney, the agency’s assistant administrator for communications.

The investigations prompted the FAA to order an unusual 30-day review of the Eclipse’s certification. FAA officials released the results of that review Friday at a news conference, saying the plane met all safety requirements.

“Our conclusion is the airplane is safe and was certified properly,” said Jerry Mack, a former Boeing executive who headed the FAA review committee.

However, FAA officials said the review also found there was a breakdown of communications on the team that certified the plane, leaving some members of the team to believe their concerns had not been addressed.

“We believe that in the end all the safety concerns related to the aircraft were addressed,” Tierney said, and that the review panel’s work will help fix the communications shortcomings.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which represents flight certification engineers, filed a grievance against FAA in October 2006, charging the Eclipse was certified despite “several outstanding safety/regulatory issues.”

Tomaso DiPaolo, the NATCA representative for FAA certification engineers, said the engineers leading the specialty areas involved in certification of the jet – structures, flight testing, propulsion, electronics, and mechanical systems – didn’t initial a “grid sheet” indicating safety issues in their specialty had been resolved, normally one of the last steps before a plane is certified. However, on Sept. 30 – a Saturday that was also the last day of the federal budget year – an FAA manager came into work and approved certification of the Eclipse 500 for flight.

DiPaolo said two members of the certification team were later denied bonuses or pay raises because FAA managers said they’d raised objections to Eclipse’s certification. DiPaolo declined to disclose the nature of the safety concerns, citing FAA rules.

FAA officials said it was not unusual for a plane to be certified on a Saturday, and that the timing was at the request of the airplane’s manufacturer, Eclipse Aviation Corp. of Albuquerque, N.M., which had asked that the plane be approved by Sept. 30.

Peg Billson, president of Eclipse aviation’s manufacturing division, said the company proposed Sept. 30 as a date for completing certification because four previous deadlines had already lapsed. She said the jet’s certification took five years instead of the expected four years because problems arose that forced the company to switch to a different engine design.