Fighting for flight: Airplane stowaway defends herself against federal charges

BROOKLYN (CN) — Svetlana Dali freely admits that two days before Thanksgiving in 2024, she boarded a Delta Air Lines flight from New York City to Paris without a ticket or a passport.

She spent almost the entire trip holed up in the bathroom, telling flight attendants she was vomiting, and gave two fake names when they asked her to find a seat shortly before a turbulent landing on the full redeye flight.

Dali, a 57-year-old permanent U.S. resident from Russia, acknowledges all of this — yet she pleaded not guilty to a federal stowaway charge. On Wednesday, she took the stand to tell her side of the story.

Security footage played in court shows Dali walking past a busy staff member to get into an initial boarding line. Then she appeared to simply go around the TSA passport check podium, a security manager who reviewed footage testified. And at the gate, Dali slipped between two groups of passengers, bypassing face scanners on either side of the jetway entrance.

“I just walked onto the airplane,” Dali testified Wednesday through a Russian translator.

She walked with a limp as she approached the stand wearing a cream-colored cable-knit sweater and khaki pants, her cropped white-blonde hair grown out enough to reveal darker roots.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brooke Theodora asked on cross-examination if Dali had noticed other passengers boarding the plane were presenting their boarding passes.

“I was looking literally at my feet. I wasn’t feeling well, I wasn’t looking around at all,” Dali said. “If they had asked me, I wouldn’t have shown it. I didn’t have it.”

Dali said she felt nauseated for the whole flight, which was just shy of eight hours long.

“I was throwing up. I was throwing up blood, too,” she testified. “I wasn’t even able to look at the watch.”

Theodora asked if anyone on the plane had actually seen her throw up. Dali retorted, “Well, if somebody would have wanted to see me throw up, I would have shown that to them.”

Regarding the fake name she provided, “Amy Hudson," Dali said, “It was just the first name I thought of."

“I got scared."

French law enforcement arrested Dali after she landed in Paris. She remained in custody until she was returned to the U.S. — on another Delta flight a week later. Back at Terminal 4 the FBI questioned Dali for two hours; she admitted to flying without a ticket and knowing it was against the law. An FBI witness testified that law enforcement read Dali her Miranda rights in English and provided her a written copy in Russian.

Defense attorney Michael Schneider, of the Brooklyn Federal Defenders, asked Dali how she felt during the interview, which began less than an hour after her return flight landed.

“Very uncomfortable,” Dali said. “I didn’t feel well and I was tired.”

Dali also said she wasn’t privy to security or FBI interview footage apart from the short clips shown in court.

“I didn’t have a chance to see any of those; the computers weren’t working,” she said.

Closing arguments are expected Thursday morning.

Dali has been held without bail since Dec. 16, when authorities arrested her in Buffalo after she cut off a GPS ankle monitor and attempted to flee into Canada.

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