32-year-old Sammuel Prescott Lackey has been charged with unarmed burglary of an unoccupied conveyance, criminal mischief over $1,000, and impairing critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n
It is alleged<\/a> that Lackey was walking along the perimeter of the airport late on Saturday evening when he climbed the fence to the maintenance facility owned by third-party contractor Jetscape. He then entered the hangar, where he found the JetBlue Airbus A320 parked.<\/p>\n The aircraft was unattended, but one of the rear doors had been left open, and a set of mobile airstairs had been placed beside it. Lackey reportedly admitted to police that he scaled the security fence and boarded the plane.<\/p>\n Once inside, he hid in one of the bathrooms and fell asleep. He was discovered the following morning when engineers were carrying out a routine internal inspection of the aircraft prior to moving it back into operation.<\/p>\n According to an arrest report from the Broward County Sheriff\u2019s Office, surveillance video footage showed someone matching Lackey\u2019s description walking around the perimeter road close to Jetscape Aviation at around 9:51 pm on August 1.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not known what time Lackey scaled the fence or when he boarded the plane, but he wasn\u2019t discovered until around 4:25 am.<\/p>\n The aircraft couldn\u2019t then return to service as planned, forcing JetBlue to incur around $2,400 in additional costs.<\/p>\n JetBlue says it is assisting law enforcement with its investigation.<\/p>\n The incident occurred just days after it was revealed that a homeless man in Slovakia had managed to scale an airport security fence at \u00a0Ko\u0161ice International Airport undetected and then boarded a parked Austrian Airlines Embraer E190 regional jet that had been parked overnight in preparation for an early morning flight to Vienna.<\/p>\n In this case, a set of mobile airstairs had been left beside the aircraft, although all of the doors to the plane had been shut. The suspect managed to open the door and then fell asleep<\/a> in the first row of seats at the front of the aircraft.<\/p>\n When the Austrian Airlines pilots and flight attendants turned up at the airport at around 4 am, they boarded the plane to find the man fast asleep. When they woke him up, he asked whether the plane had already taken off.<\/p>\n In this case, the flight to Vienna had to be delayed so that security personnel could carry out a thorough search of the aircraft.<\/p>\n Any \u2018airside\u2019 part of an airport is, of course, meant to be secure, but maintenance facilities don\u2019t generally have the same level of security as the active part of the airport, which has to be kept completely sterile from outsiders.<\/p>\n Before a plane can be returned to the active part of the airport, it has to be thoroughly searched\u2026 normally just for suspicious items, but also for stowaways.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n \t\tSubscribe to our newsletter\t<\/p>\n \n\t\tNo spam, just a weekly roundup of the best aviation news that you don’t want to miss\t<\/p>\n \t Mateusz Maszczynski honed his skills as an international flight attendant at the most prominent airline in the Middle East and has been flying ever since… most recently for a well known European airline. Matt is passionate about the aviation industry and has become an expert in passenger experience and human-centric stories. Always keeping an ear close to the ground, Matt’s industry insights, analysis and news coverage is frequently relied upon by some of the biggest names in journalism.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/cef9cb1579594cfd078520dbe0869fd066e56d5e439461f889f15c2dbeaa5417.png\")
\n\t\tMateusz Maszczynski<\/a>
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