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 from New York to Paris last week. Now, after fending off two attempts by authorities to send her back, she’s finally en route to JFK after nearly a week at Charles de Gaulle airport.
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 was 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. Authorities attempted to put her on a new flight Tuesday with six U.S. marshals, but Delta reportedly refused to fly her after she had boarded (the airline hasn’t commented on why).
On Wednesday, a plane finally managed to take off with the stowaway onboard, and it is expected to land in New York at 5:25 p.m. I hope she at least got a little jambon-beurre for the road?
This post has been updated.