Man breaks into plane cockpit
Culprit faces criminal charges
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Your support makes all the difference.A man allegedly broke into an aircraft cockpit at Albany International Airport in New York State, US.
The empty passenger plane was stationary on the tarmac when 23-year-old Stan Johnson from New York broke into the airport, walked down the runway and then snuck onboard via a jetway bridge.
Johnson allegedly then sat in the cockpit, reports WGY, before going into the airport terminal, where he was apprehended by a TSA agent.
He was arrested and has been charged with criminal trespass.
“This individual was out a little bit of a crime spree throughout the day throughout yesterday and into the early hours of this morning,” Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple told WNYT.
“He allegedly stole a car in Boston drove it to the Bronx, where he resides, abandoned the car down in the Bronx…Got up to Albany, was involved in a domestic dispute where he fled, ended up in the airport where he breached the perimeter fence, was able to also breach a jetway where he then went inside of an airplane.”
A spokesperson for the airport said: “We are conducting a full and comprehensive investigation along with Albany County Airport Authority and Transportation Security Administration.”
Local police searched the area but found nothing suspicious.
Johnson was assessed at a local mental health facility before being released.
It’s not the first time someone has trespassed in – or indeed on – an aircraft.
In 2018, a teenager was arrested after stripping down to his underwear, climbing onto the wing of a passenger jet and banging on its windows as it sat on an airport taxiway.
Police said Jhryin Jones, 19, sprinted shirtless towards the plane after allegedly scaling a fence to gain access to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
He then jumped onto the wing of a recently landed Delta Air Lines flight from Miami and pounded on windows as passengers inside watched on, reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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