Nishal Sankat, 22, pleaded guilty Monday to burglary to a conveyance after he boarded an American Airlines Airbus A321 two weeks ago and was stopped by maintenance workers, prompting a five-hour security lockdown at the airport.
Sankat was sentenced to time served for the 12 days he spent in custody since his arrest, the attorney's office said. He was also ordered to pay $909.45 -- the cost of the investigation conducted by the airport's police.
Local and federal authorities found that Sankat "acted alone and was suffering from depression and mental health issues" when he boarded the plane, the Florida State Attorney's Office said in a statement.
He was unarmed and carried no explosives at the time of the incident, authorities said.
Sankat, a dual citizen of Canada and Trinidad and Tobago, had been a student at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne since 2014 and was expected to graduate in May 2019, a school spokesperson said.
He obtained a commercial pilot certificate in January and is certified to fly single-engine and multi-engine planes, according to an FAA database.
State officials said the FAA has already begun the process to revoke Sankat's pilot license.
Sankat's visa to be in the US had expired, but he later returned legally with his Canadian passport, Melbourne Police Chief David Gillespie said at the time of the incident.
He will also be placed on the United States' no-fly list and "his status as a convicted felon ensures he can never return to the United States," the attorney's office said.
Employees held him down
Sankat initially arrived in his red sedan to the main entrance of the airport terminal but decided to walk around the perimeter of the airport when he found the doors were locked, said Reneè Purden, the airport police chief.
Then, he jumped a fence, ran across the apron and boarded the American Airlines Airbus A321. A couple of employees working on the plane saw him and asked him to identify himself and show his badge. When he approached the cockpit the workers grabbed him, held him down and took him off the aircraft, officials said.
"Get on the ground, mister. You're in trouble," spokeswoman Lori Booker said the employees told him.
Orlando-Melbourne is a popular airport for overhaul and maintenance, officials said.
The aircraft was one of four American Airlines jets on maintenance for Wi-Fi issues, an airline spokesperson told CNN.
The FBI responded to a similar incident in August when a ground service agent stole a turboprop passenger plane at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. F-15 jets were scrambled to chase the plane, which crashed on Ketron Island, between Tacoma and Olympia, killing the pilot.
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