Once again an airport's security is being called into question after a known, repeated stowaway again was able to board a flight and travel without a ticket.
Marilyn Hartman, 63, not only boarded a flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Jacksonville, Fla. on Sunday, she was able to check into a hotel under a false name and spend a few hours in the room until the real guest showed up.
Hartman was arrested by the Nassau County Sheriff's Office and charged Monday with fraud/impersonation, defrauding an innkeeper, and trespassing.
How Hartman is continually able to board flights without a ticket - getting past not only a gate agent but security before she even reaches the gate area - is perplexing and concerning. It is not known which airline was involved this time, but American, US Airways, United and Delta all run the route, with Delta the only airline offering non-stop service.
On Aug. 4 she was sentenced to six months in jail after violating a parole agreement stemming from an incident in which she breached security at San Jose International Airport and boarded a Southwest Airlines flight to Los Angeles. She was only discovered after the flight landed at LAX and flight attendants did a head count for anybody who was remaining on the aircraft that continued on to Phoenix.
When flight attendants realized there was one more passenger than what was listed on the manifest, they asked everyone to show their boarding pass. Hartman could not produce hers and was taken off the plane and arrested.
Last February, she tried to board three separate flights to Hawaii on three different days at San Francisco International. On one of those attempts, she somehow made it all the way to plane and was sitting in a ticketed passenger's seat. When she couldn't produce a boarding pass, she was removed from the flight before takeoff and arrested.
In the latest incident, Hartman flew to Jacksonville, got off the plane, boarded a complimentary shuttle bus to the Omni Amelia Island Plantation Hotel, and checked into a $300-a-night room. She apparently had overheard or otherwise found out about another traveler staying at the hotel and used that person's name to check in
When confronted by hotel officials, she fled the room and was found the next day staying in a room that was under renovation.
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