MIAMI — A 60-year-old Tracy man pleaded guilty to a lone charge of attempting to destroy an airplane, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman said Wednesday.
In a hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Marcia Cooke, Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani admitted to tampering with an air data module on a plane on July 17, about two hours before it was scheduled to fly from Miami International Airport to Nassau, Bahamas.
The plane had landed safely in Miami just before 8:40 a.m. after taking off from Orlando, with only a minor malfunctioning light bulb in the cockpit, according to a probable-cause statement filed Sept. 5 by a U.S. Transportation and Security Administration senior federal air marshal.
But when the plane tried to take off with 150 passengers and crew members aboard, an onboard computer sent an alert about the data module, leading the crew to abort the take-off.
After returning to an airport gate, inspectors honed in on the plane’s module, which handles critical data like aircraft pitch and speed, and found a key tube connected to it had been obstructed by material. Repair crews removed the module and material later that day, replacing it with a working module and clearing the plane for flight by 4 a.m. July 18.
On July 19, American Airlines security staff reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigations to look into the incident as a possible sabotage attempt. Later that day, surveillance-camera footage reviewed near the plane yielded a man, later identified as Alani, driving a truck up to the plane just before 9:30 a.m. and appearing to access the plane’s electronics compartment with the module inside.
Investigators soon learned that Alani, who usually handled repairs of disabled aircraft in an airport hangar, had switched shifts with another mechanic in order to work an additional eight-hour shift after his 10 p.m.-to-6:30 a.m. shift before donning a safety vest and borrowing a truck.
On August 7 and 8, investigators spoke with two Alani co-workers, who were able to identify Alani from footage and recalled his actions that day. One month later, investigators interviewed Alani, who admitted to adding the material to the module as well as securing it in place with glue before entering the plane’s flight desk to test whether the onboard computer would recognize the issue.
Alani told investigators he was upset over and financially affected by a stalled contract dispute between his union’s workers and the airline, and “claimed that he tampered with the Target Aircraft in order to cause a delay or have the flight cancelled in anticipation of obtaining overtime work,” the probable-cause statement said.
Alani is in federal custody and faces a March 2020 sentencing before Judge Cooke of up to 20 years in prison, but any court-imposed sentence must comply with federal guidelines and sentence-imposition rules.
Cooperating agencies, including the FBI’s South Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force, U.S. Federal Air Marshal Service, Miami-Dade Police Department’s Airport Division, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Transportation and Security Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Miami-Dade County Aviation Authority and Federal Aviation Administration, led to the case prosecuted by assistant U.S. Attorneys Randy Hummel and Maria Medetis.
Contact George Kelly at 408-859-5180.
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