Authorities say the woman got on a plane without a ticket in New York over the Thanksgiving holiday and was arrested when it landed in Paris. She has been charged with being a stowaway.
In the afternoon of Thursday, Svetlana Dali was arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn. She walked in with a limp and looked like she was in pain. Later, she sat down between her lawyer, Michael Schneider of the Brooklyn Federal Defenders, and a Russian translator.
Her lawyer said what she did was like jumping a gate or stealing a service. He also said that she went through metal detectors at the airport.
Dalí could get up to five years in jail, a fine, or both if she is found guilty.
The charge against her was based on a report from the FBI, so she didn’t enter a plea on Thursday. Defendants don’t enter a plea at their first court appearances; they do so only after being officially charged by a grand jury.
Dali is due back in court on Friday after her lawyers and the government agreed to a brief order of detention. This will give them time to put together bail and make sure they have the right address for her.
Schneider said that Dali lives in the U.S. permanently and that authorities are looking for her home in Pennsylvania.
Dali thinks her life is in danger if she stays in jail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, according to her lawyer.
Going from New York to Paris without a ticket
A criminal charge from the FBI says Dali got on Delta Flight 264 at John F. Kennedy International Airport on November 26 and went to Charles de Gaulle Airport.
A spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration said in a statement last week that she skipped two security and ticketing checks before getting on the plane without a ticket. A spokesperson said that she did go through a full security check before getting on the plane, which means she didn’t have any prohibited things with her and wasn’t a security risk.
The FBI report said Dali got to JFK at 8:13 p.m.
The complaint said that at 8:24 p.m., she tried to go through security but was turned away by a TSA worker because she didn’t have her boarding pass with her. She got through security five minutes later by going through a special line for airline workers while “masked by a large Air Europa flight crew,” the report said.
The FBI lawsuit said Dali got on the Delta flight at 10:03 p.m.
“Delta agents, who were busy helping ticketed passengers board, did not stop her or ask her to present a boarding pass,” it said.
The FBI complaint said that Delta employees found out she wasn’t meant to be on the flight to Paris at 10:37 p.m., but before it landed. They asked Dali to show them her flight pass, but she couldn’t. They then called the French police to report the incident.
The FBI complaint said that French officials detained Dali when the plane landed in Paris. She was eventually turned away from the country because she didn’t have a valid travel document or visa, according to a spokesperson for France’s border police.
She was then kicked off her Sunday flight back to the U.S. because she made a disturbance.
A top law enforcement source said Dali was arrested in New York after flying back to the U.S. on a Delta trip on Wednesday.
The FBI complaint says that Dali was questioned at JFK and admitted that she had taken the trip without a boarding pass. The report also said that she told police that she knew what she was doing was wrong.
“Among other things, she stated that she did not have a plane ticket and that she intentionally evaded TSA officials and Delta employees so that she could travel without buying one, including by looking for opportunities to circumvent them when she knew they would ask for her boarding pass,” the complaint stated.
“Rarely happens” that people get around airport security.
While Dali “did bypass some levels” of security at JFK, TSA Administrator David Pekoske said, “I would emphasize that she was screened.”
Pekoske said that getting around security checks is “not that easy” and “rarely happens.”
He said it was “crystal clear” from the security video that she was trying to get past security checks on Nov. 26, which was the busiest day for Thanksgiving travel.