Federal employee slice air targeted traffic communications with planes | KOLR
Posted: Current:
HONOLULU (AP) — A longtime federal personnel has been fined $5,000 and given two decades of probation for chopping communication concerning air website traffic controllers and planes traveling previously mentioned Honolulu in early 2019.
Joelyn DeCosta was sentenced this week by a federal decide just after pleading responsible to maliciously interfering with a federal interaction procedure. In a plea offer, she agreed to resign her occupation as a transportation-units specialist and forfeit retirement positive aspects value more than $500,000, according to federal prosecutors.
According to court docket documents, DeCosta severed main and standby communication strains between air traffic controllers in Honolulu with about 10 planes in two individual incidents on Jan. 4, 2019. Prosecutors reported pilots could not hear guidelines from controllers for two minutes.
One particular of the pilots testified about the danger that was posed to his aircraft and its 40 travellers.
The outages impacted airspace utilised for flights involving Oahu and five other Hawaiian islands.
DeCosta, 48, of Honolulu, experienced labored for the Federal Aviation Administration for 26 a long time.
