Airplane Stowaway Is Convicted of Infiltrating Flight to Paris

New York Times

22-05-2025

The woman went through the legal system much as she went through Kennedy International Airport, by ducking, dodging and imposing her own reality.
Svetlana Dali, 57, evaded layers of security to board a flight to France without a ticket or passport in November. On Thursday, she was convicted in Brooklyn federal court of being a stowaway. Sentencing guidelines call for zero to six months in prison.
Ms. Dali, a U.S. resident who had emigrated from Russia, wore a red turtleneck underneath an army-green jacket, listened impassively through a Russian-speaking interpreter as the jury foreman read the verdict.
The verdict wrapped up a trial in which federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York highlighted shocking security breaches. The incident raised concerns about how someone could have boarded an international flight without showing a passport or a ticket during one of the year's busiest travel periods.
Ms. Dali rejected a plea deal, insisting on going to trial despite a low likelihood of winning, and took the unusual step of testifying in her own defense. Ms. Dali repeatedly interrupted the trial by talking, and, on Tuesday, she asked to personally question witnesses, a request that Judge Ann M. Donnelly denied.
'Ms. Dali, please let your lawyer talk for you,' Judge Donnelly said.
The basics were not in dispute. On Nov. 26, Ms. Dali boarded Delta Flight 264 from New York to Paris with no boarding pass or passport.
She had arrived at Kennedy by AirTrain and was turned away from an initial security screening after she could not produce a boarding pass. Then, Ms. Dali tried to enter through a line for flight crews and airport employees, but was directed to the main screening area.
Ms. Dali subsequently avoided the podium where a Transportation Security Administration official would have checked her identification, and she then went through security with her bags, an airport security manager testified. At the gate, Ms. Dali evaded a ticket check by walking in the middle of two lines of passengers.
In an interview with an F.B.I. agent on Dec. 4, Ms. Dali said that, though France was the 'worst country,' she had to go there because she was being poisoned by the U.S. government with phosphates and polonium.
Limping up to the stand on Wednesday, Ms. Dali calmly answered questions from her lawyer and a prosecutor, using an interpreter.
In Ms. Dali's retelling, she arrived at Terminal 4 and 'just walked onto the airplane.' She hid in a bathroom for most of the flight, where she was 'throwing up blood,' she testified.
Cleomie Meme, a flight attendant, testified that about an hour into the flight, she noticed that one of the bathrooms had been locked for a long time and knocked. Ms. Dali, inside with both of her bags, opened the door and mimed that she was about to vomit.
Concerned, Ms. Meme offered Ms. Dali water and a plastic bag. Ms. Dali remained in the bathroom for several more hours, before Ms. Meme again knocked.
This time, Ms. Dali darted to a bathroom on the other side of the plane.
The pursuit went on. Ms. Meme asked Ms. Dali to return to her seat. Ms. Dali meandered through the aisles, and when asked for her name, said 'Amy Hudson.' After Ms. Meme told her she couldn't find that name on the manifest, Ms. Dali said she was, in fact, 'Emily Hudson.'
Ms. Meme, who described the stowaway as 'defiant,' eventually persuaded Ms. Dali to sit in a seat at the back of the plane reserved for the crew, and the plane landed less than a minute later. French police officers apprehended her at Charles de Gaulle airport.
Brooke Theodora, a prosecutor, told jurors that Ms. Dali 'knew exactly what she was doing.'
'She knew she didn't have a boarding pass, and she knew she needed one,' Ms. Theodora said.
In a filing this month, prosecutors wrote that Ms. Dali had tried to fly without papers before. On Nov. 24, she went through security at Bradley International Airport outside Hartford, Conn., without a boarding pass, prosecutors said.
In February 2024, Ms. Dali was found hiding in a bathroom in a secure location at Miami International Airport. The incidents were 'calculated trial runs,' Ms. Theodora said.
Ms. Dali first appeared in court on Dec. 5 and was released on bail. Days later, she was arrested again after she removed her GPS monitor and traveled on a bus toward the Canadian border.
Ms. Dali's lawyer, Michael Schneider, acknowledged that Ms. Dali had boarded the plane without proper documentation, but argued that the blame lay with the T.S.A. and the airline.
'Ms. Dali wanted to leave the country,' Mr. Schneider told jurors. 'She kept knocking, and Delta opened the door.'
In his closing statement, Mr. Schneider seemed to acknowledge the improbability of an acquittal for Ms. Dali.
'To be fair, you might be sitting there like, 'Buddy, everyone knows you need a ticket to get on a plane,'' he said.