A Russian national who slipped through security and boarded a Delta Airlines flight out of John F. Kennedy International Airport without a ticket has been found guilty.
Svetlana Dali, a 57 year old who held a U.S. green card, was caught on video last November going through a security screening checkpoint and TSA pat-down.
Once she arrived at the gate, Dali passed two Delta agents checking tickets, surveillance video showed. She had a hoodie sweatshirt pulled over her head as she blended in with a group of five passengers who were being checked onto the airbridge.
A federal jury in Brooklyn convicted her this week, however she can only face a maximum of six months in jail. Sentencing will be at a later date.
Court documents revealed that she had been turned away at one security checkpoint earlier in the day for not having a boarding pass.
However, video showed on her stowaway trip how she went through the airport largely unnoticed and boarded a flight from New York to Paris. She slipped past a gate attendant who was checking tickets and blended with a family. She then walked on the plane without a ticket.
Dali avoided being detected by Delta staff during takeoff by hiding in the plane’s bathroom. Toward the end of the seven-hour flight, Delta staff realized Dali was a stowaway after a flight attendant had become suspicious of her long bathroom breaks.
Dali was detained by French authorities before she entered customs and was sent back to New York, according to officials.
She told the FBI that she had to go to France because she was being poisoned by the American government.
She claimed she was being poisoned with phosphates and polonium. Phosphates is an element found in the human body, but it can be poisonous in excessive amounts. Polonium is a radioactive material.
When officials first tried to send Dali back to the U.S., she cried out on the plane, “Please help me, I don’t want to go to United States” and “I get asylum against United States,” according to a video recorded by a passenger.
She was reportedly removed from that flight before eventually being flown back to New York.
At her trial, Dali said she did not have a ticket when boarding the plane. She said she walked through to “where the people were boarding the flights and then I just walked into the airplane,” according to the New York Times.
She claimed she was “throwing up blood” while in the plane’s bathroom.
Flight attendant Cleomie Meme recalled her encounter with Dali on the November 2024 flight.
She told the court that Dali was “defiant.”
Meme said that she knocked on the bathroom door about an hour into the flight, as it had been locked for a while. Dali opened the door and indicated that she was about to vomit, according to the Times.
When Dali eventually left the bathroom, Meme asked her for her name. She first said “Amy Hudson.” When the flight attendant told Dali that she did not see her name on the manifest, the Russian national said her name was “Emily Hudson.”
