She’ll always have Paris.
The unhinged Russian stowaway who snuck onto a Paris-bound flight at JFK Airport could get grounded — following her conviction by a federal jury in Brooklyn Thursday.
Svetlana Dali, 57, was found guilty of being a stowaway on an aircraft following just about an hour of deliberations and a three-day trial during which she made the unusual choice of taking the stand in her own defense.
She could face between zero to six months behind bars, based on federal sentencing guidelines.
Dali is stopped by a TSA agent for a pat-down after passing through the body scanner. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey via APDali has been in custody for more than five months since sneaking onto the France-bound jet at the Queens airport.
She was spotted navigating past multiple security checkpoints before boarding the Delta jet on Nov. 26, 2024.
Russian citizen Dali, who held a US green card, tried to fly to the French capital for free and, when she was turned away at a TSA checkpoint, she then snuck back into the Delta boarding line after joining a queue for an Air Europa flight crew.
After spending most of the seven and a half hour trip to Paris in the airplane bathroom, pretending to be sick, a flight attendant finally demanded that she take a seat as the plane was landing.
Svetlana Dali leaves Brooklyn federal court on Dec. 6, 2024. Robert MeceaDali was turned over to French authorities once the plane landed, and sent back to the US.
She was locked up in MDC Brooklyn in January after cutting off her ankle bracelet and trying to board a Greyhound bus to Canada, feds said.
The jury was shown video of Dali illegally boarding the plane, before later admitting to federal agents that she knew what she did was wrong.
Svetlana Dali is questioned after becoming disruptive onboard a return flight from Paris to New York on Nov. 30, 2024. Gary Treichler via StoryfulDali’s defense pleaded ignorance, claiming that she hadn’t known she needed to present a passport and boarding pass to fly.
“To be fair, you might be sitting there [thinking] everyone knows you need a ticket to get on a plane,” her defense attorney, Michael Schneider, told the jury.”
A federal grand jury indicted her in January for one count of stowaway on an aircraft. Svetlana Dali/FacebookShe’s not some sophisticated word traveler. You can’t say that she knew she needed a boarding pass … because she didn’t,” he added.
Dali told the jury on Wednesday that she had been “throwing up blood” throughout the flight, which was why she had spent so much time in the bathroom.
“I was throwing up. I was throwing up blood, too. I wasn’t even able to look at the watch. I wasn’t in the position to do that,” she said.
Prosecutors said that Dali had tried to evade airport security on two previous occasions, including at Miami International in February last year and at Bradley International in Hartford, Conn. just 48 hours before her antics at JFK in November.
“This wasn’t the defendant’s first time bypassing airport security, and this is not even the first time she got caught doing it,” Assistant US Attorney Brooke Theodora told the court.
Dali told a flight attendant that the US and Russian governments were poisoning her with radioactive polonium and she was seeking asylum in Paris.
No sentencing date has yet been set by the judge, but it is expected sometime next week.
