Stowaway who flew from New York to Paris causes disturbance on return flight, remains in France

CNN

By Mark Morales, Rebekah Riess, Amanda Musa and Polo Sandoval, CNN

(CNN) — A woman who flew as a stowaway on a Delta Air Lines flight from New York to Paris earlier this week remains in France after causing a disturbance on a flight scheduled to take her back to the United States Saturday, according to two law enforcement sources.

The woman was removed from the would-be return flight before takeoff in Paris, the officials told CNN.

Her flight back to the US has yet to be rescheduled, the sources said.

Before boarding the plane, the woman had been in a waiting zone at Charles de Gaulle Airport – known as ZAPI – for people awaiting deportation, as she does not meet the conditions for entering Europe, CNN previously reported.

A man on board the plane waiting to depart from Paris told CNN the woman who was being deported was sitting across the aisle from him, his wife, and their three children.

“She kept on saying ‘I do not want to go back to the USA. Only a judge can make me go back to the USA,’” said Gary Treichler of California.

“She also repeated the Geneva convention a few times so to me that kind of showed that she was off,” added Treichler, who shared his cell phone video with CNN showing some of the pre-flight disturbance.

In the footage, the woman is seen wearing a pink hat and face mask as she pleads to be taken off the New York-bound flight. “Please help me! I don’t want to go to United States,” she yells as a woman sitting next to her attempts to restrain her. In other clips from Treichler, several Delta crew members can be seen attempting to address the escalating situation.

Investigators are trying to determine how the woman got past multiple security checkpoints at New York’s JFK International Airport on Tuesday and boarded a plane to Paris, apparently hiding in the aircraft’s bathrooms during the flight.

The stowaway didn’t have a boarding pass but completed a security screening and bypassed two identity verification and boarding status stations to board a Delta Air Lines aircraft, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

The incident happened on one of the busiest travel days of the year. Nearly 2.7 million passengers traveled on airplanes that day, two days ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, according to TSA data.

The stowaway was not carrying any prohibited items, according to a TSA spokesperson.

Delta said it is working with law enforcement and conducting an investigation of its own.

“Nothing is of greater importance than matters of safety and security,” a Delta spokesperson said in a statement. “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.”

CNN has reached out to the FBI and Customs and Border Protection for more information.

The stowaway is a woman between 55 and 60 years old and has a Russian passport, according to an airport official in Paris.

When the woman is sent back to the US, the TSA could issue a civil penalty and New York authorities could arrest her, although they are not currently involved, a federal official familiar with the investigation told CNN. The TSA is conducting its own investigation of the incident, the official noted.

New York City real estate broker Rob Jackson was on the Delta flight when the stowaway was discovered and told CNN that passengers were told to stay seated after landing so police could board the plane.

“I didn’t actually see the person in question. Apparently, she hid in a lavatory all the way at the rear of the aircraft when we departed JFK,” Jackson said. “The first announcement to passengers that there was a problem was when we parked at the gate and they instructed us all to remain seated because French police were going to board the aircraft to deal with ‘a serious security issue.’”

CNN’s Holmes Lybrand, Amanda Jackson, Lex Harvey and Saskya Vandoorne contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.