A convicted airline stowaway is reportedly under arrest again, this time after sneaking onto a United flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Italy.
Law enforcement sources told ABC News that Svetlana Dali, a Russian national and U.S. permanent resident, was detained in Milan after the flight from Newark on Wednesday.
Dali was previously convicted of being a stowaway on a Delta flight from New York-JFK to Paris in 2024.
It was not immediately clear what charges, if any, Dali is facing, or when she will be brought back to the U.S.
According to an account from WNBC-TV, also based on unnamed sources, Dali somehow got by ticket agents at Newark and wasn’t noticed by flight attendants until the flight was over the Atlantic. When questioned about her ticket, or lack thereof, she pretended not to be able to hear, they said.
In the JFK case, Dali hid in an airplane bathroom for hours and, when discovered by the flight’s crew, pretended to be sick. She was ultimately sentenced to time served for that incident, ABC News reported.
Court documents point to other episodes involving improper access to airplanes and airport facilities that Dali was not arrested or tried for. In 2024, she was allegedly discovered in a bathroom at Miami International Airport in an area for international arrivals. She claimed to have just arrived via Air France, but there was no record of her having been on a flight that day.
Dali also allegedly entered a secure area of the departures terminal at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut. That incident occurred just before her flight from JFK.
