NEW YORK – The woman accused sneaking onto a Delta Air Lines flight from New York City to Paris last week was on his way back to New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday.
The suspect, identified by two people familiar with the case as Svetlana Dali, boarded a Delta flight to return to New York from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. She is accompanied by French law enforcement officers and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents. The plane was greeted by police upon landing.
Dali, 57, is expected to be arrested Wednesday evening in New York on trespassing and theft charges, a person familiar with the matter told CBS News. So far, there are no plans to charge her with a federal crime, a person familiar with the matter told CBS News. The Transportation Security Administration says it has opened a civil case against her.
The Philadelphia resident initially managed to sneak past airport security and board a Delta flight to Paris on November 26 without a boarding pass. TSA officials said the woman used a group of passengers to bypass ID checks at JFK before entering the TSA checkpoint. She went through a body scanner and her bag was flagged during screening because she had two bottles of water, which she threw away.
She was discovered as a stowaway while the plane was still in the air and was taken into custody when she landed in Paris and was refused entry into France.
CBS News confirmed that caused a disruption on her return flight on Saturday when authorities initially tried to bring her to the United States. She was removed from that flight by French police, causing a delay of more than two hours.
Kris Van Cleave and Pat Milton contributed to this report.
