Was Successful After Being Thwarted On Two Previous Attempts At San Jose Airport In CA

Authorities are investigating a security breach that allowed a woman to board a Southwest flight from San Jose, CA to Los Angeles without a boarding pass Monday.

Fox News reports that 62-year-old Marilyn Jean Hartman (pictured) managed to skirt the gate agent checking boarding passes by sneaking through with a family and getting on board the flight. Airport officials said she had tried at least three times to get on a flight before she was finally successful.

Authorities said she had cleared the screening process because she had no prohibited items in her purse, but did not say how she had managed to get past TSA without a boarding pass. She was taken into custody when she arrived in Los Angeles at the end of the flight.

San Jose airport spokeswoman Rosemary Barnes said Wednesday that public safety "was not compromised in any way" by the incident, and that no security breach had occurred because Hartman had been screened. Barnes did say that her ability to get past the document checker and the airline gate agent without a ticket was being looked into, and Southwest said it is also "actively investigating" the incident.

Hartman appeared in court in Los Angeles on Wednesday and pleaded "no contest" to charges of "willfully and unlawfully entering the city as a stowaway on an aircraft," which is a misdemeanor. She was sentenced to 24 months probation and ordered to stay away from LAX unless she has a ticked for a flight. She told Fox News that "it was stupid, and it is something that I don't want to repeat," but she reportedly has tried the stunt before.

In February, she was arrested for trying three times to board flights to Hawaii at San Francisco International Airport on three separate days, and sentenced to 18 months probation. She had made it onto one flight, but was found out when the person holding the seat in which she was sitting showed up. On two other attempts, she was stopped by TSA in the security line.

Authorities are looking into whether she violated her first probation by boarding the flight in San Jose.

TSA says they have already made changes in the document-checking procedures at San Jose.

(Booking photo provided by the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office)

FMI: www.tsa.gov, www.flysanjose.com