Stowaway on Delta flight caught after getting aboard plane from New York City to Paris
A stowaway somehow made it onto a Delta Air Lines flight Tuesday from New York City to Paris without a boarding pass, officials confirmed.
The woman boarded Delta Flight No. 264 from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, CBS News learned. She was discovered while the plane was in midair and was taken into custody in Paris.
In a social media video posted by passenger Rob Jackson, the captain can be heard over the plane's intercom — after the plane landed in Paris — telling flyers that "we're just waiting for the police to come on board, they may be here now, and they've directed us to keep everyone on the airplane until we sort out the extra passenger that's on the plane."
A flight attendant discovered the suspected stowaway during the mostly full, but not sold-out flight after she made frequent and lengthy visits to the Boeing 767-400ER's various lavatories, according to a source familiar with the incident. The 767-400 is wide-body airliner and one of the largest in Delta's fleet with a seat capacity of 238 in the carrier's configuration.
Jackson said he noticed the flight attendants behaving oddly as they descended into Paris.
"I heard them saying, like, 'We have a passenger who we think was hiding in the lavatory during takeoff. She does not have a seat. She did not have a boarding pass,' and, you know, basically she's a stowaway," Jackson told CBS News correspondent Lilia Luciano.
Flight attendants have access to the flight's manifest, which lists passengers and seat numbers, allowing the crew to verify the woman was a suspected stowaway and not ticketed for the flight. Three pilots and eight flight attendants were on Tuesday's flight, according to the source familiar with the incident. Delta didn't disclose the number of passengers, citing ongoing investigations into the incident.
The woman's name was not immediately released. The French Ministry of the Interior identified the woman as a Russian national and said she would be returned to the U.S.
"She was refused entry to France for lack of a valid travel document (visa), and was placed in a waiting area for the time needed to return her to the United States as she held a valid US residence permit," the ministry said in a statement to CBS News on Friday.
A Transportation Security Administration source told CBS News that the woman went through an advanced imaging technology body scanner at a checkpoint in JFK Airport after somehow appearing to evade the document and ID check portion of the TSA process. Her bags were also scanned for prohibited items before she went to the gate and snuck onto the flight, the source said.
In a statement provided to CBS News, a TSA spokesperson said that it could "confirm that an individual without a boarding pass was physically screened without any prohibited items. The individual bypassed two identity verification and boarding status stations and boarded the aircraft."
"TSA takes any incidents that occur at any of our checkpoints nationwide seriously," the spokesperson said. "TSA will independently review the circumstances of this incident at our travel document checker station at JFK."
In order to be present at an airline departure gate for boarding, an individual must have cleared a TSA security checkpoint.
After getting through TSA security, it's unclear how exactly the woman boarded the plane without showing a boarding pass or passport to Delta staff.
"Nothing is of greater importance than matters of safety and security," Delta 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."
French law enforcement and the TSA are separately investigating. The woman could be subject to a civil penalty or fine for bypassing the document check process.
There is new technology known as e-gates that are being rolled out at airports which involves using biometrics to check travel documents as part of the international departure boarding process. Such technology would have caught the stowaway.
In March, a man was removed from a Delta flight that authorities said he sneaked onto in Salt Lake City after going through security with a boarding pass for a different carrier's flight, which turned out to be full. In February, a woman who also went through screening flew on an American Airlines flight from Nashville, Tennessee, to Los Angeles without a ticket and was taken into custody upon landing, officials said.