Marilyn Hartman, 66, eluded staff at O’Hare International Airport's domestic terminal by hiding her face with her hair. Then she took a shuttle to the international terminal and stayed overnight at the airport.
A day later she boarded a British Airways flight.
The serial stowaway sat in an empty seat after boarding the plane. She was caught when she showed her documents to a customs agent.
Hartman was detained after arriving in the UK and later sent back to Chicago and charged with felony theft and a misdemeanour count of criminal trespass, CBS reports.
According to the Sun, she had made around 13 failed attempts to board flights without a ticket but was successful at least three times.
Called the “infamous serial stowaway”, Hartman has boarded flights without a ticket or identity papers several times. In 2016, she was sentenced in Chicago to six months of house arrest and placed on two years of mental health probation, reports the Associated Press.
She succeeded in getting on a Southwest Airlines flight from San Jose to Los Angeles in August of 2014.
n that incident, she slipped past an agent who was checking a family's boarding passes at Mineta San Jose International Airport, went through electronic security screening and then somehow got past a gate agent. She was discovered only after landing at Los Angeles International Airport.
In February 2014 she made it into an airplane seat for a Hawaii-bound flight at San Francisco International Airport but was discovered when the actual ticket holder showed up and was removed before takeoff.
On other occasions, she was arrested after raising suspicions by loitering in terminals without a boarding pass.
(With inputs from AP)