One passenger boarded a Delta Air Lines flight Tuesday from New York City to Paris without boarding, officials confirmed.
The woman boarded Delta Flight No. 264 from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, CBS News has learned. He was found when the plane was mid-air and was taken into custody in Paris.
In a social media video posted by the pilot, the captain can be heard over the plane’s intercom – after the plane landed in Paris – telling the passengers that “we are just waiting for the police to come in, they might be here now, and they have ordered us to keep everyone on the plane until we fix the other pilot on the plane.”
A flight attendant found the suspect in the plane’s frequent, but undisclosed dives after repeated and lengthy visits to various parts of the Boeing 767-400ER, according to people familiar with the incident. The 767-400 is a large-body aircraft and one of the largest in Delta’s fleet with a maximum of 238 seats in the passenger configuration.
Flight attendants have access to the airline’s manifest, which lists passengers by seat number, allowing flight attendants to determine that the woman was a suspected hijacker and did not have a plane ticket. Three pilots and eight crew members were on board Tuesday’s flight, according to the source. Delta did not release the number of passengers, citing an ongoing investigation into the incident.
The woman’s name was not immediately released.
A Transportation Security Administration source told CBS News that the woman went through a high-tech scanner at a checkpoint in JFK Airport after she appeared to evade the document and ID checks that are part of TSA procedures. His bags were checked again for contraband before he went to the gate and boarded the plane, the source said.
In a statement provided to CBS News, a TSA spokesperson said it can “confirm that a person without a boarding pass was physically screened without any prohibited items. This person bypassed two screening and boarding stations and boarded the plane.”
“TSA takes seriously incidents that occur at any checkpoint in the country,” the spokesperson said. “TSA will independently review the circumstances of this incident at our document review station at JFK.”
In order to be present at the departure gate of the plane to board, one must have cleared the TSA security check.
After going through TSA security, it is unclear how the woman boarded the plane without showing a passport or passport to Delta employees.
“Nothing is more important than safety and security issues,” Delta said in a statement. “That’s why Delta is conducting a rigorous investigation into what may have happened and will work closely with other aviation stakeholders and law enforcement to do so.”
French law enforcement and the TSA are investigating separately. A woman can be sentenced to a civil penalty or a fine for avoiding the process of checking the document.
There are new devices called e-gates being used at airports which involve using biometrics to check travel documents as a means of departure to other countries. Such technology would have caught the stowaway.
In March, a man was removed from a Delta flight Authorities said he sneaked into Salt Lake City after going through security with a boarding pass for another carrier’s flight, which turned out to be overbooked. In February, a woman also involved in the investigation flew an American Airlines flight from Nashville, Tennessee, to Los Angeles without a ticket and was taken into custody upon disembarking, officials said.
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