What Would You Do for a Flight to Paris?
Over Thanksgiving weekend, while you watched all of Gossip Girl’s Thanksgiving episodes in a row, one woman channeled more time and energy than you will ever possess into moving to Paris for free. This woman, whose name hasn’t been released by authorities but whom CBS has identified as Svetlana Dali, reportedly snuck onto a Delta flight that left New York on Tuesday night and, though she was supposed to return on Saturday, caused such a ruckus before takeoff that she was removed from the plane and remains in France.
According to CNN, Dali, a Russian national in her 50s with a U.S. green card, managed to get through the security screening at JFK and avoided various ID and boarding-pass checks to somehow smuggle herself onto the full flight. She apparently spent the seven-hour trip hopping between bathrooms, which eventually caught the attention of a flight attendant and also happens to be a recurring nightmare of mine. Anyway, according to one person on the plane, everything on this flight seemed normal until it landed and the pilot announced that police were coming onboard to remove an extra passenger.
Dali reportedly requested asylum in Paris, was swiftly denied, and is being held in a zone at Charles de Gaulle airport for people awaiting deportation. (If this sounds like the plot of a movie, that’s because it basically is; see: The Terminal starring Tom Hanks.) On Saturday, she was escorted to a flight back to New York, but shortly after the plane left the gate, police were reportedly called to remove her because she’d become disruptive, causing the flight to sit for two hours before takeoff. It eventually did take off for New York — without her — and per CNN, her return flight to the U.S. has not been rescheduled. I hope that after seven hours in a plane bathroom she is at least enjoying a little jambon-beurre at the airport.
Related