Screenshot: ABC News
When news first broke that a Texas man had successfully been able to sneak onto a plane last week in Salt Lake City using nothing but a photo of someone else’s ticket, many wondered how he actually accomplished that. And new airport surveillance footage obtained by ABC News is giving us some clues.
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Wicliff Yves Fleurizard, a 26-year-old from Texas, was arrested on March 17 and charged with being a stowaway on a Delta Air Lines flight that was departing from Salt Lake City. Fleurizard was apparently acting strangely after boarding the flight and hanging out in the bathroom, before a flight attendant put it together that he wasn’t supposed to be on the flight. When the flight attendant asked what seat he was in, there was already someone sitting in it, raising a red flag and causing the plane to return to the gate.
But how did he actually get on the flight? As new footage published by ABC News shows, he was photographing tickets from other passengers without them noticing, giving him access to QR codes that could then be used to board the flight. Fleurizard photographed different boarding passes multiple times with multiple people, finally using one of the images to scan the QR code from his phone to get access to the plane, as you can see in the screenshot below.
Screenshot: ABC News
The footage published by ABC News only appears to show Fleurizard photographing one other passenger’s paper ticket, but prosecutors have alleged he also took photographs of the phones of other passengers. One of the other passengers was a “minor female,” according to the indictment and it was her boarding pass that presented a problem when she tried to board and the system said she had already boarded.
Fleurizard reportedly apologized for making a mistake and just wanted to get home quickly after failing to secure another flight with a different airline. But now he faces felony charges of being a stowaway.
Plane stowaway takes photo of another passenger’s boarding pass, sneaks into flight
There’s just one remaining question: What did Fleurizard use to get through TSA security? According to the New York Times, Fleurizard was able to get through the TSA line without a problem, but passengers typically need to present both and ID and their boarding pass. While the Texas man reportedly had a valid Florida ID, it’s still not clear how he’d get through security without a boarding pass—unless, of course, he did the same trick photographing someone else’s boarding pass earlier.