NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – An off-duty flight attendant was sentenced to five years in federal prison Friday for leaving a bomb note on an airplane and intentionally interfering with a flight crew.

Gay Wilson accepted a plea agreement in early March but tried to withdraw her plea in U.S. District Court on Friday. Judge Todd J. Campbell declined the request.

Besides the sentence of five years – which is about the same time recommended by prosecutors – Campbell also sentenced Wilson to two years of supervised release. During that time, Wilson is not allowed to fly on an airplane.

Wilson’s lawyer Kenneth L. Lawson did not comment about the sentencing.

Several of Wilson’s families members said they were distraught about the judge’s sentence. They said the note was a joke and that Wilson didn’t mean any harm.

“The sentencing should have been much lighter,” said Chiquita Wallace, Wilson’s niece, who said Wilson did not have a prior criminal record and has been an upstanding citizen her whole life. “The truth never really came out.”

Wilson, who was 37 and living in Arlington, Texas, at the time of the May 2004 incident, has been jailed in Kentucky since.

Wilson was traveling on an American Airlines flight with 129 passengers from Dallas to Boston when, in Nashville airspace, she went to the bathroom and claimed she found a bomb note, authorities said.

The note read: “There is a bomb on board this flt (sic) to Boston in cargo. Live Sadaam (sic)!”

During testimony Friday, flight attendants who were on the flight said Wilson came out of the airplane lavatory and handed them the note. But they never suspected she wrote it, though she has since acknowledged it.

Kathy Glauser, one of the flight attendants who testified, said her reaction to learning Wilson wrote the note “was like a stab through the heart.”

Two fighter jets escorted the airplane to Nashville International Airport, where it was evacuated. Authorities didn’t find a bomb on the aircraft.