Convicted stowaway arrested again following flight to Milan
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Ms Svetlana Dali was detained at Milan’s Malpensa Airport and could face prosecution in the US for bypassing security to board the United Airlines flight.
PHOTO: REUTERS
NEW YORK – A woman previously convicted of stowing away on an international flight has been arrested in Italy after getting on a plane at Newark Liberty International Airport without a ticket, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ms Svetlana Dali was detained at Milan’s Malpensa Airport and could face prosecution in the US for bypassing security to board the United Airlines flight, said the person who asked not to be identified discussing a law enforcement matter.
“We are investigating this incident and working with the appropriate authorities,” United Airlines said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office in New Jersey declined to comment as did a spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
An FBI Newark press official said the agency was aware of the matter and is working with other authorities to investigate it.
Contact information for Ms Dali wasn’t immediately available and it’s unclear if she has a lawyer representing her over the latest incident.
Ms Dali was convicted of a stowaway charge in 2025 after federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, said she sneaked on to a flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport bound for Paris in November 2024.
Prosecutors said she hid in a bathroom to evade being discovered by flight attendants.
While awaiting trial, she removed her electronic ankle monitor and fled the US on a bus to Canada but was later arrested in Buffalo, federal prosecutors said at a pretrial hearing.
Evidence at Ms Dali’s trial in 2025 showed that to board the Paris-bound flight, Ms Dali evaded airport security by sneaking into a line for airport staffers.
She was later arrested in France after the crew realised mid-flight that Ms Dali did not have a ticket or an assigned seat, they said.
After she was convicted at a trial over the 2024 incident, she was sentenced to the time she had already been in custody.
Prosecutors said the 2024 flight to Paris wasn’t Ms Dali’s first stowaway attempt.
They said she previously sneaked through security at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut, but wasn’t able to board.
She was also found hiding in a bathroom in a secure location at Miami International Airport in another instance, authorities said.
Given the high security standards in the industry, aircraft stowaways are an incredibly rare occurrence.
Climbing up an aircraft’s landing gear is the most common way of stowing away on a plane, though it’s rare to survive as wheel bays are unpressurised and unheated, resulting in oxygen depletion and hypothermia that usually proves fatal once a flight reaches cruising altitude. BLOOMBERG
