A former JetBlue flight attendant accused of cursing out a passenger and sliding down an emergency exit chute at a New York airport will get a mental-health evaluation as part of a possible plea deal, lawyers in his case agreed Tuesday.

Steven Slater appeared Tuesday morning in a New York City courtroom for a brief, routine hearing on charges of criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and trespassing.

Former JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater, right, arrives with lawyer David Horwitz at a New York City court on Tuesday for a hearing on criminal mischief charges. (Mary Altaffer/Associated Press)

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said Slater's willingness to be evaluated shows he's taking the charges more seriously than he had in the past.

Brown, speaking to reporters after the hearing, said it would behoove the public to take the Aug. 9 incident more seriously, noting the slide cost $25,000 to repair and the plane had to be taken out of service afterward, causing passenger delays.

"It's no laughing matter," he said.

Slater had spoken out after the incident, as his public opinion swelled and hundreds of thousands of fans online cheered him for standing up to the inhospitable world of airline travel.

Slater's lawyer, Daniel J. Horwitz, said his client was taking the matter very seriously and said he had been under tremendous pressure because of his terminally ill mother, recently deceased father and health problems of his own. (Slater is HIV positive.)

He said he was hoping prosecutors would take into account Slater's "long-standing and well-regarded reputation in the industry."

Horwitz said he hopes they can come to an agreement that resolves the case, but he wouldn't specify what he was looking for. Brown said if Slater is admitted for alternative sentencing, he could undergo a treatment program lasting weeks, but he said it depended on the outcome of the evaluation and he's not ruling out the possibilty of jail time.

Slater's future unclear

Slater, his head held high, left the court without speaking to the swell of reporters surrounding him. His publicist, Howard Bragman, and lawyer said he's in good spirits and has spent the past few weeks in California with his ailing mother.

Slater resigned from JetBlue last week after about three years there; JetBlue said only that he was no longer an employee. Slater has spent nearly 20 years in the airline industry, but it's not clear what he's going to do now.

"Right now we want to get past the criminal issues. Then we'll worry about the future," Bragman said. "Obviously he will be unemployed until all this is resolved."

JetBlue suspended Slater after the incident. It told employees in a memo that press coverage was not taking into account how much harm can be caused by emergency slides, which are deployed with a potentially deadly amount of force.

With files from CBC News