A federal jury in New York City didn’t buy the unlikely story of a now-famous stowaway. The Daily News reports,
On Thursday, a Brooklyn Federal Court jury found Svetlana Dali, 57, guilty of stowing away on an aircraft, roughly six months after she captured national headlines by getting on board Delta Flight 264 to Paris without a ticket or boarding pass.
Dali was turned away from TSA last November, but snuck in among members of a flight crew from another airline. She then hid out in a lavatory for the JFK to Paris flight.
Her defense, such as it was, consisted of claimed ignorance regarding the need for a boarding pass. She was handed over to authorities upon landing. Dali is likely to be sentenced to time served. After a three-day trial, the jury took only an hour to deliberate.
Speaking of TSA, the agency announced passenger statistics for yesterday, with nearly 3 million recorded.
That was 30,000 more airline passengers than recorded on Sunday, itself the largest number since last Thanksgiving.
Yesterday’s figure was 62,000 above the corresponding date from 2024, heading into the early-summer holiday weekend. It also sits some 286,000 above the corresponding date in 2023.
Happy Trails!
