Former American Airlines mechanic Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani pled guilty in federal court to attempted sabotage of an airplane.
He admitted to tampering with a flight-monitoring device on a Boeing 737 jet in July 2019, in one count of attempted destruction of an aircraft.
According to court documents his intention was not to put passengers in harm but to make the flight-monitoring system inoperable so that he would get paid overtime to fix it.
He was annoyed over the stalled contract talks between the union and American Airlines which had impacted him financially.
Following his arrest there was media speculation his motive may have been terror-related but no charges regarding this were filed.
"His conduct is not representative of the work performed every day by our 15,000 Technical Operations safety professionals. Safety is the foundation of everything we do, and we know our maintenance team takes that responsibility seriously every day," the airline said.
Alani is still detained and could face 20 years prison if convicted.
