NEW YORK — A woman who snuck past security checkpoints and made her way onto a Delta Air Lines flight from New York to Paris remains in France.
ABC News and CNN report that officials tried to send her back to the U.S., but the woman became unruly and had to be removed from the plane.
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The woman was found Tuesday on the international flight from John F. Kennedy Airport to Charles de Gaulle Airport.
TSA officials told ABC News that the woman bypassed the ID check podium, completed a security screening and slipped past a Delta gate agent.
Rob Jackson, who was on the flight, says he overheard crew members discussing a stowaway.
“I overheard the flight attendants talking about it with the pilots – they said this person was in one lavatory and then would exit and walk to a different lavatory and go in there for a long time,” Jackson told CNN.
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French officials said the suspected stowaway is a Russian national who didn’t have valid travel documents to enter the country. They tried to send her on a return flight to the U.S. before she became unruly, CNN reports.
“She kept on saying ‘I do not want to go back to the USA. Only a judge can make me go back to the USA,’” passenger Gary Treichler told CNN.
Delta Air Lines said they are conducting an “exhaustive investigation” into the security breach.
TSA spokesperson Daniel Velez said the TSA takes any incidents at checkpoints “seriously” and it will “independently review the circumstances” at JFK Airport.
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