Marilyn Hartman

Marilyn Hartman (born 1951 or 1952), known as the Serial Stowaway, is an American woman known for stowing away on at least 22 commercial airline flights since 2014. She has been widely dubbed a "real-life Ada Quonsett" after the infamous "harmless little old lady and habitual stowaway" character, played by Helen Hayes, from the 1970 movie Airport.

Hartman's attorneys said in 2021 that she is mentally ill and that her stowaway conduct is a compulsive behavior. Three days later, she made another attempt at SFO but was stopped at the security checkpoint.

On February 9, 2015, Hartman flew from Minnesota to Jacksonville, Florida without a ticket. She was arrested in Jacksonville after checking into a hotel under another person's name when that person arrived at the hotel. She was charged with fraud by impersonation and other crimes. In February 2016, she pleaded guilty to trespassing but served less than a year in jail. At the time, Hartman was living in a mental health facility in Chicago's Near North Side.

On October 11, 2019, Hartman was arrested while trying to pass through security without a boarding pass or identification, again at O'Hare. At the time Hartman was still on probation from the London incident.

On March 3, 2022, Hartman pleaded guilty in Cook County Court to felony trespass and escape from electronic monitoring and was sentenced to two years and 18 months in prison for both charges, but she received credit for two years and five months already served. Prosecutors had dropped all other pending charges. In a statement, Hartman explained that she was "happy to move on with my life."

Reaction In March 2021, the Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn described Hartman's conduct as a "sad story" and said interviews with her revealed "no hint of menace, but plenty of pathos, paranoia, and confusion." He wrote that Hartman had revealed "holes and vulnerabilities in airport security" and that her case called for mental health treatment "in a safe, therapeutic setting" rather than imprisonment.