Security breach at Zurich Airport Travelers sneak onto the plane without a boarding pass
There are more and more cases at Zurich Airport of people bypassing the boarding pass checkpoint and making it onto the plane. However, security is not at risk, according to an airport spokeswoman.
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- At Zurich Airport, people repeatedly manage to bypass boarding pass control and board an aircraft without permission.
- There, however, they are caught when passengers are counted and rechecked.
- The number of cases is increasing, as an analysis by SRF shows. However, Zurich Airport maintains that this does not jeopardize security.
In June 2024, a woman manages to board a plane at Zurich Airport without a valid boarding pass. She took advantage of an unobserved moment to bypass security and made it on board a flight to Amsterdam.
Because the flight attendants count the number of passengers on the plane and compare this number with the number of boarding passes issued, they finally discover the stowaway. She is then arrested and fined 500 francs.
A few weeks later, she tried to fly to Barcelona without a ticket "to visit friends." This time, she went through the gate right behind a person with a boarding pass. A man uses the same trick to get onto an airplane. He was under the influence of alcohol and wanted to try out whether flying without a ticket was as easy as fare evasion on the train.
Cases on the increase
SRF Investigativ has looked at penalty orders and comes to the conclusion that there are more and more cases of people bypassing ticket checks and entering the security area without authorization - especially at Zurich Airport. There was one such case in 2023, four in 2024 and four in May 2025.
Airport spokeswoman Bettina Kunz confirms that such incidents are on the rise. However, they are better detected by sensors and cameras. The four cases in 2024 would be compared to almost 11 million local passengers flying from Zurich. Since 2018, the airport has had to inform the Federal Office of Civil Aviation about unauthorized access.
However, it is crucial that the ticket control, where the boarding pass is issued, is separate from the security check. The latter is more difficult to bypass.
From New York to Paris without a ticket
Kunz admits that people repeatedly get very far at Zurich Airport without a boarding pass. To her knowledge, however, no one has ever actually flown without a ticket.
The situation is different from Munich, where one man managed to fly to Sweden without a ticket. A woman who flew from New York to Paris without a ticket even made it across the Atlantic. Both were later sentenced in court for their offense.
