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Nishal Sankat, 22, pleaded guilty on Monday for burglary after boarding an American Airlines Airbus A321 two weeks ago. He was stopped by maintenance officers, which resulted in the airport being shut down for five hours.
Sankat has been sentenced to 12 years in prison since his arrest, said the prosecutor's office. He was also sentenced to pay $ 909.45, the cost of the investigation conducted by the airport police.
Local and federal authorities found that Sankat "acted alone and was suffering from depression and mental health problems" when he boarded the plane, the Florida Attorney's Office announced in a statement.
He was not armed and did not carry explosives at the time of the events, authorities said.
Sankat, both a citizen of Canada and Trinidad and Tobago, has been studying at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne since 2014 and is expected to graduate in May 2019, said a school spokesman.
He earned a Professional Pilot Certificate in January and is certified to fly single-engine and multi-engine aircraft, according to an FAA database.
State officials said the FAA had already begun the process of revoking Sankat's pilot license.
Sankat's visa for being in the United States had expired, but he later legally returned with his Canadian passport, said Melbourne Police Chief David Gillespie at the time.
He will also be placed on the US no-fly list and "his convicted criminal status guarantees that he will never be able to return to the United States," the prosecutor's office said.
The employees kept it
Sankat first arrived in his red sedan at the main entrance of the airport terminal, but decided to bypass the perimeter of the airport when he found that the Doors were locked, said Reneè Purden, the chief of the airport police.
Then he jumped a fence, crossed the deck and boarded the Airbus American Airlines A321. A couple of employees working in the aircraft saw him and asked him to identify and show his badge. When he approached the cockpit, the workers caught him, kept him on the ground and took him out of the plane, officials said.
"Put yourself on the ground, sir, you have problems," spokeswoman Lori Booker told staff.
Orlando-Melbourne is a popular airport for overhaul and maintenance, officials said.
The plane was one of four American Airlines jets in maintenance for Wi-Fi problems, said a spokesman for the airline to CNN.
CNN's Keith Allen, Eliott C. McLaughlin and Chuck Johnston contributed to this report.
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