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…