JetBlue flight attendant in meltdown pleads guilty

The flight attendant whose job-quitting meltdown landed him in court pleaded guilty to attempted criminal mischief on Tuesday and will undergo at least a year of counseling and substance-abuse treatment.

"At the end of the day, I'm a grown-up and I must take responsibility for my actions," Steven Slater said outside a New York City court. He thanked his attorney, prosecutors, his mother and his partner, and said the public interest in his case had surprised him.

Slater pleaded guilty to second-degree attempted criminal mischief, a felony, before mental health court Judge Patricia Hirsch. He also pleaded guilty to fourth-degree attempted criminal mischief, a misdemeanor.

He will undergo at least a year of counseling and treatment under the plea deal.

If he completes the program to the judge's satisfaction, the top charge will dismissed and only the misdemeanor will remain. If he does not complete it, he will get one to three years in jail.

Slater's escape occurred Aug. 9 aboard a JetBlue Airways Corp. flight from Pittsburgh that had just landed at Kennedy International Airport. Slater got on the loudspeaker, cursed at passengers, then slid down the plane's emergency chute with a beer.

His unusual departure made him a cult hero to some.

He was a topic on TV shows, on the front pages of newspapers and hundreds of thousands of fans online cheered him for standing up to the inhospitable world of airline travel and quitting his job so spectacularly.

His fame has waned, but it's not gone: In a homage to Slater this Halloween, several retailers are selling their own versions of the disgruntled airline employee or the angry steward.

"It's a blue steward shirt with a light blue tie and it comes with a Band-Aid for your forehead," Todd Kenig, chairman of Ricky's NYC, told the AP last week.

Slater remains unemployed after resigning from JetBlue. He worked there about three years, though he had spent nearly 20 in the airline industry.

JetBlue suspended Slater and told employees in a memo that press coverage was not taking into account how much harm can be caused by emergency slides, which are deployed with a potentially deadly amount of force.

District Attorney Richard Brown scolded Slater - and the public - for not taking his actions more seriously, noting it cost $25,000 to fix the slide and that the plane had to be taken out of service afterward, causing flight delays.

Slater's attorney, Daniel J. Horwitz, said his client took the matter very seriously. He said Slater had been under tremendous pressure because of his terminally ill mother, recently deceased father, and health problems of his own, adding that his client is HIV positive.