A stowaway made it onto Delta Air Lines flight 264 from New York JFK to Paris on Tuesday night – and the airline didn’t find her until they were nearly ready to land, as first reported by aviation watchdog JonNYC.
She managed to get through security without a boarding pass (so TSA botched things first) and then boarded the aircraft without showing credentials to do so either.
Delta’s New York JFK Terminal 4 Security Checkpoint
The flight was completely sold out, so no seats were available to her, but she reportedly hid in a lavatory for takeoff but eventually drew suspicion because she would leave “one lavatory and then just going into a different one…staying inside for a long time.”
Of course that happened to me once after I got food poisoning, but it’s enough reason to at least ask questions. They did, discovered the woman was a stowaway, and the captain had authorities meet the aircraft on arrival. They boarded the aircraft, and passengers were all required to stay seated at the end of the long flight while the issue was addressed.
— JonNYC (@xjonnyc.bsky.social) November 27, 2024 at 12:27 PM
According to the TSA,
TSA can confirm that an individual without a boarding pass completed the airport security screening without any prohibited items. The individual bypassed two identity verification and boarding status stations and was able to board the aircraft.
For its part, Delta Air Lines offers,
Nothing is of greater importance than matters of safety and security. That’s why Delta is conducting an exhaustive investigation of what may have occurred and will work collaboratively with other aviation stakeholders and law enforcement to that end.
Back in March, a stowaway was caught flying Delta Air Lines from Salt Lake City to Austin. They found him after he snapped a photo of a child’s boarding pass and used it to get on the plane and then hid in the lavatory. It turns out it was a full flight so there was no empty seat to sit in, and the plane turned around and went back to the gate. The child’s boarding pass had errored as already having been used, but the gate agent overrode it and let the kid board anyway.
Then, in April, there was a Delta flight with two different sets of stowaways. And this all came months after a Russian without ticket, passport or visa flew to Los Angeles without anyone noticing. Here, a serial stowaway explains how she does it.
These are innocuous incidents…but imagine if someone wanted to do harm.
Seems pretty easy to bypass the system.
And if you paid off a caterer to smuggle on some weapons… .
Sounds like a good movie plot.
She completed TSA security screening. She bypassed the ID check step, which is not security. It is revenue protection for airlines to make sure you don’t transfer your ticket to somebody else.
With holiday crowds in full swing, with all kinds of people entering the security checkpoint from all directions, it’s not hard to see how somebody could slip through the ID step.
I can see not addressing the issue until the end of the flight once you have taken off. No passenger seats were available and she would have needed a seat.
I really want a follow up after this security incident and see who gets fired! From TSA agents to FA’s
Find out!
Tell us!
For a Premium Airline should this have happened?
3rd “security” step bypassed … FAs checking and locking lavatories on take off
No doubt Delta will find a way to blame anybody but themselves for this. That’s just how they operate.
Wow, what a wild story! It’s incredible (and a bit concerning) to hear about a stowaway on a packed flight. I can only imagine the chaos that must have ensued! It raises questions about airport security and how something like this could happen. Has there been any follow-up on how the airline is addressing this situation? It would be interesting to see what measures they might implement to prevent it in the future.
But, had there been an empty seat, she would have been entitled to self-upgrade after departure. Was this Ada Quonsett (Helen Hayes)?
“No passenger seats were available and she would have needed a seat.” This was a 764, so if it did not have a crew rest area, there would be those seats reserved for crew rest available at some point. Plus, I’m guessing there are more FA jumpseats on the plane than FAs nowadays.
Do they know for certain that she came into JFK via a passenger security screening checkpoint at JFK on the day of departure of the JFK-CDG flight? In other words, have they eliminated the possibility that she flew into JFK as a domestic airline passenger earlier that day or some prior day; have they eliminated the possibility that she had cleared the passenger security screening checkpoint at T4 on some prior day and just remained airside until becoming a stowaway on this flight?
Between the Clear mess and the non-Clear mess at jfk T4 for the passenger security checkpoint, there is a way to avoid ID and boarding pass checks, but you have to get really lucky and/or really known what you are doing in order to pull that off to get airside at JFK T4 without a boarding pass for a same-day departure from the airport or having arrived into JFK on an earlier domestic flight.
After SAS had the Israeli-Russian stowaway incident from CPH into California, SAS went with a revised headcount policy and they know seem more uptight with keeping plane lavatory doors locked prior to (and during) take-off after seatbelt signs are on.
Seems like TSA knows for certain from camera footage that she cleared the PSC at JFK T4.
I have a feeling this would have been less likely to have worked out if the TSA wasn’t up to its latest (and more expensive) “passenger ID is security” nonsense. I suspect that she managed to skip the stupid “ID is security” check in its latest incarnations at JFK T4 in large part because the TSA TDC no longer requires presenting a boarding pass unless sometimes when dealing with CLEAR. And CLEAR has been such a weird mess at JFK T4 this month that it sort of would help with evading the ID check if you quickly switched lines at just the right time while blending in with other travelers who may seem to be part of the same travel party.
If the stowaway was a man — even more so if a man with higher skin melanin level than average in the country — the lavatory hopping would probably have been noticed and made an issue earlier than it was.
Of course the TSA checkpoint would be easy to clear with a boarding pass for another flight (that could later be cancelled and refunded). though it seems more likely the perp pulled a Marilyn Hartman.
In any case it should be impossible to board the airplane without scanning a ticket. But GAs are not the most competent. They will flag you to sign your passport but they did not stop me when I boarded an international flight with an expired passport (my mistake and theirs).
You would think DL would check and lock toilets before international flights but I guess that is not part of SOP.
I’ve said this before – Delta *especially* has leaned into things like digital ID to the point where many passengers walk through security without presenting identification OR boarding pass at the TSA checkpoints. I don’t remember the last time I showed either at JFK or LGA. Obviously, you should need a boarding pass to board at the gate – but given how chaotic gates are, I am not surprised that this doesn’t happen more often.
It happens more often than becomes public domain info confirmed publicly by the authorities.
There are stowaways who don’t get caught as stowaways.
Nothing screams premium like various stowaway issues.
I didn’t know Tim Dunn was a woman!
Ahh good to see a Bluesky link, avoiding the odor of Muskrat.
I made the mistake of buying a very questionable sandwich early morning at Moscow – DME.
Got food poisoning and rode the lavatory or stayed within 10′ of it over the Atlantic. Things calmed down about 40 minutes before landing and I got back in my seat. A LH FA did ask me what was up and I told him.
Security and credentials.
AAs screening of ‘gate lice’ has been making the round on all the FF blogs. I was like huh, when you scan your boarding pass it isn’t already telling them what boarding group you are in?!
A Premium Stowaway experience on Delta.
This is the first blog about Delta where I haven’t encountered a Tim Dunn comment about how Delta is better or makes more money by the action in the blog.
The fact that it took most of the flight is mind boggling. Now granted people that do something like this are dumber than dirt and have severe mental health issues. But what are the going to do at the end of the flight? Flight attendants come off last or generally stay onboard if it’s a quick domestic turn. If they walked off after flight attendants, particularly if new crew was coming onboard it would set off an immediate investigation of who this person was. Cleaning people would be reporting someone in the lav after deplaning.
The stowaway is a woman in her late 50s with a Russian passport.
She’s being held for deportation at CDG in the ZAPI area. That’s because she’s not admissible to the Schengen area since she had previously submitted an asylum that was rejected and wasn’t otherwise admissible.
So ,my 81 year old husband gets completely patted down and forced to take off his shoes , have his earbuds inspected, and display his fire tablet open in order to determine he is not a threat and these people have no trouble avoiding inspection? Most of this TSA stuff is expensive nonsense. How many threats are actually thwarted? How many threats are completely missed?
Russian spy? What did she have on her?
This Russian passport using stowaway was physically screened for restricted weapons/explosives/incendiaries in the same way as most passengers at the JFK T4 passenger security screening checkpoint. She didn’t bypass the body and baggage scanners meant to prevent restricted WEIs from getting airside.
They have had problems trying to send her back to the US as the country of residence for the Russian-passport using stowaway. She hasn’t been cooperative.