A mechanic who worked for more than three decades for American Airlines Group Inc. pleaded guilty on Wednesday to tampering with a plane in the middle of contentious contract negotiations.
Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani, 60 years old, admitted to gluing a piece of foam to block a module that reports speed, pitch and other critical flight data on a plane that was scheduled to carry 150 passengers from Miami to the Bahamas in July.
Mr. Alani, who had worked for American since 1988, lived in California but worked at Miami International Airport.
He had said that he didn’t want to harm passengers, but was trying to delay or cancel the flight in the hopes of getting overtime work.
American earlier this year sued the unions that represent the mechanics, accusing them of causing an operational crisis by slowing down repairs and refusing overtime. American has said the slowdown caused more than 1,200 delays and cancellations.
Pilots received an error message when they powered up the plane. Another mechanic discovered the obstruction in the plane’s air data module system.
Passengers on the July 17 flight were moved to another plane.
“He made a terrible mistake,” his attorney, Jonathan S. Meltz said Wednesday. “Terrible, terrible lapse in judgment, but it does not make him a terrible man.”
Mr. Alani is slated to be sentenced in March in Miami federal court.
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