A man who phoned in a bomb threat to the airport in Northern Kentucky in hopes of delaying a flight he was running late to catch has been sentenced to four months in jail.
Dana Carter, 40, of Dayton, Ohio, will serve the sentence on weekends, over a total of 60 weeks, according to an entry on the federal court web site.
The entry said Carter will then be on home detention for a period.
Carter and a female companion were booked to fly out of the Greater Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky Airport on a United flight to Dallas on October 22, 2016, but he was running late, according to court records and a news release from U.S. Attorney Robert M. Duncan Jr.
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The airport started getting calls from a cell number registered to Carter about 45 minutes before the departure time, initially reporting a suspicious man in the waiting area.
Then at 2:58 p.m. — 21 minutes before the scheduled departure time — the airport got a call reporting there was a bomb on the flight Carter was trying to make, according to a court record.
Cell records showed Carter was on the north side of Cincinnati at the time, 15 to 20 minutes form the airport.
Carter acknowledged making the false threat to delay the flight, Duncan said in the release.
United canceled the flight and police searched the plane.
The airline booked most of the passengers on another flight that left within two hours, and Carter and his companion made that one, according to a court record.
Even Carter’s attorney, F. Dennis Alerding, called the fake bomb threat a “foolish act.”
Alerding requested probation for Carter, but U.S. District Judge David Bunning imposed time behind bars during a hearing Thursday.
Carter also will be liable for $7,748 in restitution to United over the canceled flight.
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