Ex-Airline Manager Tied To 9/11 Sentenced In Child-Sex Case
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PITTSBURGH (AP/CBSDFW) - A former American Airlines operations manager who learned of the first Sept. 11, 2001, hijacking before the jet struck the World Trade Center has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on a federal interstate child-sex charge in Pittsburgh.
Ray Howland, of Arlington, who pleaded guilty in June in federal court, was also ordered Wednesday to spend 10 years on probation after he serves his sentence.
In addition to working for Fort Worth-based American Airlines, Howland was a troop leader in the Longhorn Council of the Boy Scouts of America, leading a co-ed program for teens called Venture Crew.
Howland was arrested near Pittsburgh International Airport last June by an undercover state attorney general's agent who posed as a woman with a 10-year-old daughter. The now 56-year-old Howland used an iPad and a cellphone to send explicit messages after posting online that he was "looking for a family or a couple of girls" for sex while in town on business.
Howland received some of the first panicked calls from employees at Boston's Logan Airport reporting the hijacking of an American Airlines Flight that hijackers crashed into New York's World Trade Center towers.
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