Airline manager linked to 9/11 drama facing child-sex charges

PITTSBURGH - An American Airlines operations manager who learned of the first 9/11 hijacking before the jet struck the World Trade Center faces a federal court arraignment in Pittsburgh on child-sex charges.

Fifty-five-year-old Ray Wickliffe Howland, of Arlington, Texas, is scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate Monday. Federal records are still sealed, but they stem from his arrest in June near Pittsburgh International Airport.

That's when the Pennsylvania attorney general's office charged Howland with arranging a sexual encounter with a woman and a 10-year-old girl. Howland allegedly posted 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 Logan International Airport in Boston reporting the hijacking of American Flight 11 on Sept. 11, 2001.