A longtime federal employee has been fined US $5,000 and given two years of probation for cutting communication between air traffic controllers and planes flying above Honolulu in early 2019.

Joelyn DeCosta was sentenced this week by a federal judge after pleading guilty to maliciously interfering with a federal communication system. In a plea deal, she agreed to resign her job as a transportation-systems specialist and forfeit retirement benefits worth more than $500,000, according to federal prosecutors.

According to documents and information presented in court, DeCosta was an Airway Transportation Systems Specialist for the Federal Aviation Administration, and had worked for the F.A.A. for approximately 26 years.

Court documents said that on January 4, 2019, “she willfully and maliciously severed communications between Air Traffic Control in Honolulu and aircraft flying in U.S. airspace above and around Honolulu, in an area known as Sector 4, which covers flights between Oahu and Maui, Lanai, Moloka’i, Kaho’olawe, and the Big Island. The main and standby communication lines between Hawaii Air Traffic Control and pilots of approximately six planes during one incident and approximately four planes during a second incident were affected by the outages.”

In total, pilots could not hear instructions from Air Traffic Control for a total of two minutes, as a result of the outages caused by DeCosta.

One of the pilots testified about the danger that was posed to his plane and its 40 passengers.

The outages affected airspace used for flights between Oahu and five other Hawaiian islands.

DeCosta, 48, of Honolulu, had worked for the Federal Aviation Administration for 26 years.