A stowaway was caught aboard a Delta Air Lines plane as it was preparing to take off from Seattle for Honolulu, on Christmas Eve, the authorities said Friday, a month after a woman sneaked on to a Delta flight from New York to Paris without a ticket.
The Delta aircraft was taxiing at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport around 1 p.m. on Dec. 24 when the airline determined that someone was on board without a ticket, prompting the plane to return to the gate, Morgan Durrant, a representative for Delta, said in a statement.
When the plane arrived back at the terminal, the person believed to not have a ticket briefly thwarted the authorities by exiting the aircraft and hiding in a restroom, according to Perry Cooper, an airport spokesman.
Video surveillance eventually led officers from the Port of Seattle Police Department to the spot, and the person was “arrested for criminal trespass,” Mr. Cooper said.
All the other passengers left the plane to be sent again through security checkpoints, and a K-9 unit swept the aircraft before it took off for Honolulu, Mr. Cooper said.
“An investigation is ongoing, but early indications are the unticketed passenger boarded the flight at the gate without presenting a boarding pass,” Mr. Durrant of Delta said.
The authorities did not release the identity of the stowaway.
The Transportation Security Administration, or T.S.A., said in a statement that the person “bypassed the identity verification and boarding status stations,” adding that the person “did not possess any prohibited items.”
Delta and the T.S.A. said they were investigating what had happened.
The agency and the airline have faced scrutiny over the high-profile stowaway episode last month in which a woman exploited weaknesses in Kennedy International Airport’s security system and flew from New York to Paris without a ticket or a passport, according to federal prosecutors.
“We did shift briefs and work force messaging, including town halls, immediately following the J.F.K. incident,” a T.S.A. spokesman said. The statement added that the agency was “working on increasing physical barriers around ticket document checkers that don’t already have them.”
Earlier this week, a body was discovered in the wheel well of a United Airlines aircraft that landed in Hawaii after flying from Chicago. It was not clear immediately how or when the person entered the wheel well. The police did not immediately say whether the person who died was a stowaway.
The post Stowaway Caught on Delta Plane at Seattle Airport appeared first on New York Times.
