Delta Air Lines flight attendants foiled a stowaway attempt by an unticketed suspect who attempted to evade gate agents to sneak onboard a Honolulu-bound flight from Seattle Tacoma International Airport on Christmas Eve.
The stowaway was only caught, however, when the Airbus A321 plane was already taxiing for departure after flight attendants became suspicious and asked to see their boarding pass.
Delta flight DL487 pushed back at around 1 pm on December 24 but returned to the gate when the crew could not find any record of the suspect being booked on the flight.
When the aircraft doors were reopened, the suspect managed to escape and fled into the terminal building before the police arrived. A subsequent search by law enforcement tracked down the stowaway to an airport restroom and they were taken into custody.
The incident comes just weeks after a Russian woman managed to sneak aboard a Delta Air Lines flight to Paris from New York JFK. Svetlana Dali hid in the airplane restrooms for most of the transatlantic flight and was only discovered in the last hour of the flight to Europe.
According to a Port of Seattle spokesperson, the police used airport video surveillance to trace the suspect to a terminal restroom.
The stowaway had hidden inside the secure ‘airside’ area of the terminal overnight before managing to sneak onboard the Hawaii-bound plane.
“Through further investigation, it was determined the subject had managed to get through a TSA security checkpoint the evening of 12/23 without a boarding pass but was properly screened,” the Port of Seattle spokesperson explained.
“The subject also gained access to the loading bridge without a scanned ticket at the gate. The Port of Seattle Police will continue to work with the airlines and TSA regarding the situation,” the statement continued.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) also confirmed that the stowaway evaded “identity verification and boarding status stations” but reiterated that the suspect was subjected to standard TSA airport security screening procedures.
Nonetheless, the Port of Seattle Police Department called in a K9 unit to sweep the aircraft before passengers were allowed to reboard the plane. In the end, flight DL487 departed just over two hours late.
A spokesperson for Delta Air Lines added: “As there are no matters more important than safety and security, Delta people followed procedures to have an unticketed passenger removed from the flight and then apprehended.”
“We apologize to our customers for the delay in their travels and thank them for their patience and cooperation.”
An investigation into how the Russian stowaway managed to sneak onboard Delta flight DL264 at New York JFK on November 26 is still underway, although the airline has confirmed that standard protocols designed to prevent this kind of incident were not followed.
In the case of the Russian stowaway, it’s believed that she hid in an onboard lavatory for most of the seven-hour transatlantic flight. The plane was otherwise fully booked, and there were no spare seats for her to occupy.
Flight attendants are meant to check the lavatories before departure, and the standard operating procedure is that the plane should not push back from the gate until this check has been completed.
Last March, Wicliff Yves Fleurizard managed to sneak onboard a Delta flight to Atlanta in Salt Lake City after surreptitiously taking a photo of a young girl’s boarding pass and using the barcode to access the jetty.
Fleurizard was only caught when he realized that the flight was fully booked and there were no spare seats. He initially tried to hide in a lavatory and planned to take a spare seat once all the other passengers had boarded but he quickly drew the suspicion of the flight attendants.
