An American Airlines mechanic who worked for the company for more than 30 years pleaded guilty to intentionally tampering with an aircraft to avoid up to 20 years in prison, according to reports.
Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani, 60, admitted to authorities that he used a piece of foam to mess up the plane’s air module system— which tells pilots everything about a plane’s speed, pitch, and other data about the flight— aboard a July flight scheduled to fly from Miami to Nassau in the Bahamas with 150 passengers on board.
“I do admit the guilt,” he said through an Arabic interpreter in Miami federal court Wednesday, according to the Miami Herald.
Alani, who is originally from Iraq, told the court he did not want to harm any passengers when he messed with the navigation system, yet replied “no” when asked if he would take his family on a plane without an operational navigation system.
None of the 150 passengers aboard Alani’s aircraft suffered injuries because the aircraft never left the ground, authorities said.
An error alert appeared when pilots started the aircraft, which caused the flight to be taken out of service for routine maintenance and passengers to be placed on another plane.
Alani told federal investigators he tampered with the system that morning because he was upset about a union contract negotiation with American Airlines that had not been moving forward as planned.
Prosecutors said at a September detention hearing that Alani displayed support for the Islamic State (ISIS) by making statements about Allah, saying that he wished Allah would harm non-Muslims using his “divine powers” while he shared ISIS videos on his cellphone.
The former plane mechanic faces up to three years in prison and is due back in court for sentencing on March 4.
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