In the final stretch of 2024, reports show multiple instances of stowaways and people trying to become one when they got caught sneaking onto flights without a ticket.
The most high-profile incident occurred on Dec. 17 when a 57-year-old Russian national, Svetlana Dali, was arrested for the second time after trying to board a bus from Philadelphia to Canada.
Three weeks earlier she’d been arrested for traveling without a ticket on a Delta Air Lines (DAL) flight from New York to Paris. She was released from jail on the condition that she surrender travel documents and wear an ankle monitor. (Dali subsequently cut that off to attempt a second getaway.)
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Passenger tries to sneak onto flight to Hawaii
On Dec. 25 United Airlines (UAL) workers discovered a body in one of the compartments of the plane’s landing gear when it landed at Kahului Airport in Maui from Chicago.
While United said it was unclear “how or when the person accessed the wheel well,” the person probably tried to get to Hawaii as a stowaway, not realizing that a plane’s unpressurized wheel houses can reach temperatures of minus 76 degrees F. (minus 60 C.).
Another stowaway was discovered aboard Delta’s Flight 487 as it was preparing to take off for Honolulu from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Christmas Eve.
Delta said the “unticketed passenger [was] removed from the flight and then apprehended” before the flight took off for its destination.
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“The individual bypassed the identity verification and boarding status stations and boarded an aircraft at Seattle/Tacoma International (SEA) without a boarding pass,” the Transportation Security Administration said in a statement.
The agency said it “takes any incidents that occur at any of our checkpoints nationwide seriously” and “will independently review the circumstances of this incident.”
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The effort to contact the authorities and remove the passenger required a more than two-hour delay.
Security experts weigh in on stowaways, unticketed passengers
“We apologize to our customers for the delay in their travels and thank them for their patience and cooperation,” the airline said in a statement.
The frequent stowaway incidents have led to speculation about how such lapses in aviation security could occur on multiple airlines and in different cities.
Juliette Kayyem, a former Department of Homeland Security official and national security analyst for CNN, addressed the incident in which Dali was able to pass multiple layers of security at JFK without a ticket and make it all the way to the flight.
Dali was stopped during security checks for having two bottles of water. She was required to throw them out but was not identified as not having a valid ticket until she was on the flight.
How it happened remains under investigation. Kayyem called the incident a “complete failure” of security.
“She falls outside of every high-risk profile by age, gender and ethnicity and therefore, that might explain why the systems did not pick her up,” Kayyem said.
Mary Schiavo, an aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, said in a statement that the Dali incident was “a really big deal and it leaves our vulnerabilities exposed to the world.”
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