A man scaled a security fence at Raleigh-Durham International Airport and boarded a Delta jet in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, landing himself in jail while preventing a flight to Cincinnati from taking off.

Gregory S. Wester of Fuquay-Varina walked onto the Boeing 737-800 and quietly took a seat while a cleaning crew was working on the plane about 3:30 a.m., airport spokeswoman Mindy Hamlin said. Wester had climbed a 7-foot fence topped with barbed wire to gain access to the tarmac at the airport's Terminal A.

Airport police charged Wester with first-degree trespassing and illegally possessing a prescription drug. He also faces a federal charge of gaining access to an aircraft without permission. He remained in the Wake County jail late Tuesday.

The breach of security forced the airport to check the ramp and other planes at Terminal A, but no other problems were found, Hamlin said.

Wester, 32, appeared disoriented when the cleaning crew called police, and he remained so when the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration interviewed him later, Hamlin said.

"When asked what his purpose was, he said that he was going to take a flight," said Hamlin. She added that authorities could not find any record that he was booked to fly Tuesday.

Wester did not harm or threaten anyone, Hamlin said. In fact, initial reports from the airport wrongly said that he was found sleeping.

"He was just sitting calmly," Hamlin said.

The plane Wester boarded had arrived from Salt Lake City at 11 p.m. Monday and was scheduled to leave for Cincinnati at 6:35 the following morning. More than 120 passengers boarded the plane about 7 a.m. and sat for two hours before the flight was canceled.

During the wait, the captain told passengers that there had been some sort of security breach and that the crew intended to take off after completing some paperwork. Instead, passengers were each given a $7 food voucher and booked on other flights.

Delta decided on its own to cancel the flight, after security checks by police and federal authorities took longer than the airline expected, said spokesman Anthony Black. Delta didn't have a backup plane at RDU and wanted to get passengers onto other flights, Black said.

Like many on the Cincinnati flight, Craig Schwartz of Cary couldn't understand why, if the flight was going to be canceled, it couldn't have happened sooner.

"What gets me is, if this happened in the middle of the night, why it took hours and hours to get it taken care of," said Schwartz, 48, who was heading to Seattle on business.

Steve Shaw, 27, a medical student at East Carolina University, reckoned he could have driven to Cincinnati in less time than it would take to get a new flight.

"It blows my mind that you can't get 3.5 ounces of toothpaste on a plane," he said, "yet somebody can sneak on a plane and take a nap."