A woman who stowed away on a Delta flight from New York to Paris last week has been released from custody after being charged in federal court, but with more than a dozen conditions.
Svetlana Dali, a US permanent resident and Russian national, is charged with one count of being a stowaway on a vessel or aircraft without consent. She appeared in federal court in Brooklyn Friday afternoon, where a judge detailed the conditions of her release without paying bail. She could face up to five years in prison if convicted.
Judge Joseph Marutollo ruled Dali cannot go to airports, must submit to GPS monitoring, surrender any travel documents and cannot leave the area where she is staying or facing charges. She must also abide by a curfew and be evaluated and submit to any recommended mental health treatment.
Dali, 57, will live in Philadelphia with an acquaintance from her church. The acquaintance told the court he was willing to let her live there as she had nowhere else to go.
The judge raised a number of concerns about releasing Dali, including her ability to travel without documents and no third-party taking legal responsibility for her, but her attorney noted although she had no one else in the United States, she did have family and a fiancée in Europe.
“If you ask us for a third-party custodian, you are going to keep our client in jail,” federal public defense attorney Michael Schneider told the court. “We do not believe she is a serious risk of flight … It’s not as if she can sneak on a flight every day.”
Alternately, prosecutor Brooke Theodora said, “We do believe she is a risk of flight,” noting the incident was not a simple case of a three-dollar turnstile hop, but rather a security breach that raised national security and safety concerns.
Dali’s attorney had previously likened Dali’s offense to “turnstile hopping” and noted that she did pass security screening.
Theodora said Dali told investigators she had tried to stow away before at a number of airports. She highlighted a police report from February 2024 indicating Dali tried to enter a secure arrivals area at Miami International Airport and get through customs to the planes.
Dali appeared in court Friday wearing baggy, green khaki prison garb and a hospital bracelet, walking with a cane with a medical sicker on her arm. Prior to the hearing, the court staff noted she was taken to the hospital by ambulance Thursday night after complaining of chest pains. Schneider noted Friday there was little likelihood of her going to jail.
Dali, who French authorities identified as the rogue passenger, was arrested by the FBI Wednesday upon her deportation to the US.
She first appeared in court Thursday, where she did not enter a plea. During a Thursday hearing, Schneider said Dali complained about the conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center Brooklyn, the prison she was housed in Wednesday. She likened it to torture, according to Schneider, saying she was cold and that she didn’t get medical treatment.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs the prison, said it doesn’t “comment on the conditions of confinement for any incarcerated individual,” but is working to address “staffing and other challenges” previously raised during its improvement efforts over the last year.
Now that Dali has been charged, officials are sharing a clearer picture of how she made the extraordinary journey, which has raised serious questions about airport security. Here’s what we know:
What happened?
Dali snuck onto Delta flight 264 from New York’s JFK International Airport to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport on November 26.
Dali “stated that she did not have a plane ticket and that she intentionally evaded TSA security officials and Delta employees so that she could travel without buying one,” the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York alleged in a criminal complaint filed Thursday.
Investigators reviewed surveillance footage at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and noted Dali was turned away at a Transportation Security Administration security checkpoint because she didn’t have a boarding pass, according to the complaint. But five minutes later she returned and was able to get past the TSA checkpoint by going to a lane for airline employees.
She proceeded to a departing gate where “Delta agents, who were busy helping ticketed passengers board, did not stop her or ask her to present a boarding pass before she boarded the plane,” the complaint said.
Attempting to stay undiscovered, she hid in the bathroom to remain out of the crew’s sight, according to one passenger account.
“I overheard the flight attendants talking about it with the pilots,” New York City real estate broker Rob Jackson told CNN. “They said this person was in one lavatory and then would exit and walk to a different lavatory and go in there for a long time.”
Crew members did not alert passengers to the stowaway in their midst until the flight landed in the French capital, 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,’” he said.
In a video recorded by Jackson, a voice on the plane’s intercom says, “Folks, this is the captain, we are just waiting for the police to come on board. They may be here now and they directed us to keep everyone on the airplane until we sort out the extra passenger that’s on the plane.”
Dali was detained by French police, who found she was ineligible to enter the country and ordered her to be sent back to the US.
Who is Svetlana Dali and what do we know about her?
Records indicate Dali once lived in the Philadelphia area.
Authorities have not said whether she had tried to sneak onto a plane before, or if she was previously known to law enforcement. It is unclear how long she had been in the United States.
Dali has filed two lawsuits in recent months alleging that she is the victim of military-grade chemical weapons and a kidnapping plot, according to court records.
She had applied for asylum in France a few years ago, a Paris airport official told CNN.
Following her detention at the Paris airport, she was scheduled to return to the US on Saturday – but was removed from a Delta flight to New York after creating a disturbance before takeoff.
She eventually took off on Wednesday. Wearing a black jacket, pale gray beanie and a pink scarf, Dali sat quietly in the middle aisle at the back of the plane, flanked by two French security officials.
During the flight, she occasionally leaned her head against the seat in front of her and stared at the floor or closed her eyes and listened to music.
Dali declined to speak with CNN after landing.
CNN has attempted to contact Dali’s family and friends to find out more about her.
How did she get past security?
Dali bypassed an employee in charge of the Known Crewmember checkpoint at JFK Terminal 4, then got through checkpoints where her ID and boarding pass should have been verified, a Transportation Security Administration spokesperson told CNN.
At the gate, she placed herself in the middle of what appeared to be a family traveling together, according to a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. She was not carrying any prohibited items, according to a TSA spokesperson.
Asked repeatedly to describe what took place at the gate, Delta has not commented.
The airline said it had reviewed its own security after the incident and insisted its infrastructure “is sound.”
Delta blamed the breach on a “deviation from standard procedures,” but did not specify how it strayed from its usual security practices.
“We are thoroughly addressing this matter and will continue to work closely with our regulators, law enforcement and other relevant stakeholders,” Delta said in a statement. “Nothing is of greater importance than safety and security.”
CNN has reached out to Delta to ask whether Dali will be banned by the airline.
TSA inspectors are also preparing a civil case against Dali after reviewing security video from inside JFK Airport, an agency spokesperson told CNN. The TSA cannot bring criminal charges, though it can refer them to the Justice Department.
The incident should serve as a “wake-up call” for the airline industry, according to a CNN aviation analyst.
Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the US Department of Transportation, said, “It’s a really big deal and it leaves our vulnerabilities exposed to the world.”
CNN’s Ray Sanchez, Pete Muntean, Alexandra Skores, Rebekah Riess, Holmes Lybrand, John Miller, Taylor Romine and Amanda Jackson contributed to this report.
