A passenger without a boarding pass managed to get on a Delta Air Lines flight this week from New York to Paris, prompting an investigation, officials said.
The stowaway was caught on Delta Flight 264 from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport on Tuesday on a Boeing 767-400ER, according to the Atlanta-based airline.
Delta said it is “conducting an exhaustive investigation of what may have occurred and will work collaboratively with other aviation stakeholders and law enforcement to that end.”
The ticketless passenger went through security screening, according to the Transportation Security Administration. But it’s unclear how the person was able to get past ID and boarding pass checks to be able to board the plane.
The crew did not find out the stowaway was on board until the flight was almost to Paris, when flight attendants were suspicious that a woman was hiding out in the lavatory, according to a passenger’s account and video posted on social media.
The captain told passengers over the intercom that police were boarding the plane and “they’ve directed us to keep everyone on the airplane until we sort out the extra passenger that’s on the plane.”
TSA said it will “independently review the circumstances of this incident at our travel document checker station at JFK to ensure future incidents do not occur.”
The breach occurred during one of the busiest days of the holiday travel season, with TSA expecting record volumes of passengers, including about 2.8 million people nationwide on Tuesday.
In a separate incident in March, a man who schemed his way onto a Delta flight without a ticket at Salt Lake City International Airport was caught before the plane took off and arrested, according to police.
In that incident, the man went into the lavatory at the front of the plane and stayed there during boarding, according to a felony complaint. After boarding finished, he then went to the back of the plane and entered another lavatory.
When he exited the lavatory, “a flight attendant noticed that there were no seats available on the plane,” the complaint said. The plane was already taxiing to the runway.
That man had taken photos of passengers’ phones or boarding passes when they were not looking, according to the complaint, and used a photo on his phone of a young girl’s boarding pass. The man told authorities he had a Southwest “buddy pass” from a friend, the complaint said. He was screened at the security checkpoint with a photo ID that matched his boarding pass.
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