WICHITA, Kan. — A Kansas man was arrested Friday on charges that he planned to set off a car bomb at the Wichita airport in an attack intended to support Al Qaeda, authorities said.
Terry Lee Loewen, a 58-year-old avionics technician who worked at the airport, was arrested before dawn as he tried to enter the tarmac in a vehicle he believed was loaded with high explosives.
But the materials in the car were inert, and no one at the airport was in any immediate danger, authorities said.
Loewen, a Wichita resident, had been under investigation for six months after making online statements to an undercover agent about wanting to commit ''violent jihad'' in the United States, US Attorney Barry Grissom said.
Authorities said Loewen spent months studying the layout of the Mid-Continent Regional Airport, its flight patterns, and other details to maximize fatalities and damage. During that time, he developed a plan with other conspirators to use his employee access card to pull off the attack. The conspirators were undercover FBI agents.
Loewen planned to die in the explosion, a fate that he said was inevitable in his quest to become a martyr in a jihad against America, according to court documents.
Authorities said they believe Loewen acted alone.
In his online conversations, Loewen expressed admiration for Anwar Al-Awlaki, the American-born Al Qaeda leader who was killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen, authorities said.