A sign in front of an East Moriches business pays tribute to the crash victims. (AP Photo)

For more than eight hours after USAir Flight 427 crashed outside Pittsburgh in September, 1994, Janine Katonah heard nothing from the airline even though she knew that her husband, Joel Thompson, had been on the plane.

"I took him to the airport. I knew from the television set that there were no survivors," Katonah, of Oak Park, Ill., recalled yesterday.

Finally, at 2:30 a.m., the airline called.

Complaints about the way airlines have notified next-of-kin have surfaced after almost every major air disaster, including the ValuJet crash in the Florida Everglades in May and this week's explosion of TWA Flight 800 - in which New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani publicly chastised the airline for what he called its insensitivity.

"It's our position that the airlines shouldn't be acting as the family advocate. They're in a position of damage control and cost control for themselves," said Johanna Maas of Pittsburgh, a board member of Families of Pan Am 103/Lockerbie. Maas' brother died when a terrorist bomb blew up the plane over Scotland in 1988.

The industry says it's doing the best it can under difficult circumstances.

The Air Transport Association, which represents major domestic carriers, says most people believe that airlines can produce a usable passenger list by pushing a single button.

But the list must be verified by matching it against ticket coupons collected from passengers. This is sometimes complicated by such things as misspelled names, passengers using maiden or married names and tickets that have been given to someone other than the purchaser, the association says. "To release an unchecked manifest runs the very real risk of subjecting a family to misinformation, which would create its own anguish,'' Robert Warren, the group's general counsel, said at a congressional hearing last month.

Some critics are calling for the government or another third party, such as the American Red Cross, to take over the job of notifying families. But the airlines contend that would only complicate the process.

The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is preparing a bill that would require the National Transportation Safety Board to appoint a family advocate to be the government's liaison with families and mandate the board to brief family members on the investigation.

The bill, expected to be introduced next month, would also require that the airline notify next-of-kin using people trained in handling disaster victims.