United Stowaway Got Past TSA With A Fake Boarding Pass, Got On The Plane And Asked To Sit In Flight Attendant’s Seat

A man was trying to get from Houston to Los Angeles without paying a ticket, and figured if he could just get near a United gate he could make it between the airline’s two hubs. He got past TSA without a valid ticket. His fake boarding pass wouldn’t scan on the first flight he tried.

But on his second flight he managed to tailgate behind another passenger, past a distracted United Airlines gate agent. He ‘pretended to show’ his boarding pass and walked down the jet bridge – and onto flight 469 to Los Angeles.

• At TSA he first had trouble with his boarding pass, was escorted to another TSA kiosk, and was allowed through security.

• He wandered the airport, spoke with United employees at gate C35, then tried to board a Los Angeles flight at gate E16. He tried to scan a boarding pass twice, failed both times, argued with a United employee, and was turned away.

• About an hour later, he was at gate D4 and paced awkwardly while watching United employees scan boarding passes. He joined the boarding queue and – when agents were preoccupied with other passengers – pretended to show a boarding pass and walked down the jetway.

• Once on the aircraft, he sat down in an aisle seat and – according to the woman next to him – he appeared unsure whether the seat was his. He went to the lavatory, then came back 15 minutes later. The correct passenger was in the seat he had squatted, so he went to another lavatory as the plane began taxiing.

• A passenger alerted a flight attendant. The man was told to return to his seat, but hid in still another lavatory at the back of the aircraft.

Crew confronted him. He identified himself as “Mr. Lopez.” Since the flight was full, he asked to sit in a jump seat. But since there was no “Mr. Lopez” on the flight’s manifest, they returned to the gate.

They were met by the Houston Police Department, an explosives detection K9 unit, the FBI, the airport authority and TSA. Everyone was deplaned. The aircraft was checked for explosives.

During questioning, he gave his real name/date of birth and showed a United confirmation number and boarding pass. It turns out he’d made a reservation, but it was never ticketed. According to investigators, the boarding pass was “possibly fake,” missing nformation and with a forged QR code.

Officers decided not to take him to jail immediately, and he began recording the airport and law enforcement and left.

The flight was delayed three hours. The incident actually took place May 18 – but Abdulrahman Oriyomi was arrested on Friday, arrested and charged with felony for interrupting the operation of a critical infrastructure facility.

🚨 BREAKING: Major Security Breach at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport;

25-year-old Houston man Abdulrahman Oriyomi is facing felony charges after authorities say he slipped through TSA screening with a fake boarding pass and boarded a United flight to Los Angeles.… pic.twitter.com/xGbED2TrzF

— Bethany O’Leary 🇺🇸 🦅 (@BethanyForTruth) June 5, 2026

It appears that the “works at Deloitte (or did).” It’s possible his LinkedIn bio isn’t real, either! And if it is, it’s probably not updated with “open to work.” Several things failed here.

• TSA authenticates IDs and matches the person to a reservation and runs the passenger against screening databases. The unticketed reservation may have been sufficient for this, although he may have been handled as an exception – there are numerous identification failures every day (just because there are millions of passengers, rare exceptions happen daily).

• The gate process worked on the first flight. He was turned away after his fake boarding pass failed to scan twice. But there was no follow up.

• He ultimately snuck on board, but it was a full flight so his lack of a seat gave him away.

It seems odd to me, at least, that he wasn’t immediately arrested – that this took a couple of weeks, he initially received just a warning, and left.

Situations like this aren’t common but not unheard of, either. In fact, they seemed for awhile to happen most frequently with Delta, like the woman with no ID or boarding pass who went through TSA, boarded Delta, and was discovered in another passenger’s seat.

The 2024 story of a passenger actually flying Delta from New York JFK to Paris became famous – they got through TSA without a boarding pass, boarded a sold out flight, and – like here – spent time moving between lavatories until they were on the other side of the Atlantc.

Shortly after, a Christmas Eve Delta Seattle – Honolulu flight had a passenger that had gotten through TSA with no boarding pass, got past the gate agent, and was found as the aircraft taxied. Everyone got off – including the suspect – but they were found in a terminal restroom.

Around the same time someone photographed a child’s boarding pass to get on the plane but when they tried to board the system flagged them as already on the plane. But the gate agent overrode it. He, too, hid in the lavatory.