A senior American Airlines manager will appear before a federal magistrate today to face charges for attempting to 'organize a sexual encounter with a child'.
Ray Wickliffe Howland is alleged to have sent emails back and forth with a detective who was posing as a 32-year-old mother with a 10-year-old daughter.
During the exchanges, Howland said he was going to be in town for business and wanted to meet up to have sex, according to officials.
The 55-year-old said that he was looking to meet 'a family or a couple of girls' for the encounter.
'He explained in detail, through email and text messages, the sexual acts he hoped to engage in,' a statement from Attorney General Kathleen Kane read at the time of his arrest.
The senior operations manager from Arlington, Texas, was arrested at a hotel in Moon Township, Pennsylvania in June as part of the sting operation set up by the state attorney general's office.
He has been held at the Allegheny County Jail in lieu of $150,000 bail since then.
Today, Howland is due to appear before a federal magistrate in Pittsburgh where he faces charges of unlawful contact with a minor, criminal attempt of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child and criminal attempt of rape of a child.
Authorities were also investigating into whether Howland may have tried to organize other such meetings with minors.
The suspect allegedly told law enforcement that he had been talking with a man in Texas who sent him pictures of his 12-year-old daughter, who had 'met with other people'.
Police found a photo of the girl on Howland's iPad, as well as his other communications with the Texas family, as detailed in the criminal complaint.
According to Howland's LinkedIn page, he has worked as a senior IT manager at American Airlines for the past seven years.