Sister charged with disrupting flight to remain in jail.

ANCHORAGE (AP) -- A young woman arrested for disrupting a flight to Shanghai during a fight with her identical twin sister will remain in jail for now.

Crystal Mikula, 22, was denied release to a third-party custodian at a bail hearing late Friday. Mikula's attorney had requested that she be allowed to stay at the Salvation Army's Eagle Crest residence in downtown Anchorage and report by phone six times a day to a court-approved custodian.

But U.S. Magistrate John Roberts said he wanted tighter supervision for Mikula. Roberts gave her the option of being released to the Cordova Center, a halfway house, when bed space becomes available.

Mikula declined that option for now. Instead, she will remain at the Hiland Mountain Correctional Center.

Defense attorney Michael Taggart explained that, by remaining in jail, Mikula would get credit for time served if she is found guilty of the charges.

Crystal Mikula and her sister Cynthia were charged with interfering with a flight crew -- a federal felony that carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000.

Prosecutors said the two started drinking shortly after the flight took off, began arguing and swearing at each other, used the aircraft restroom to smoke and tussled with the United Airlines crew.

Cynthia was handcuffed after she allegedly struck three crew members and spit on a fourth. The flight from San Francisco to Shanghai was diverted to Anchorage where the plane's 233 passengers and 22 crew members spent the night before resuming their journey the next day.

A bail hearing for Cynthia Mikula is scheduled for Tuesday.

Taggart said he spoke with the girls' mother, Vicky Mikula of Buckley, Mich., who said she and her husband could not come to Anchorage to supervise their daughters if they were released on bail.

''They cannot afford to do so,'' Taggart said.

Vicky Mikula has said she took out a $10,000 loan to send her daughters to California in an effort to launch their modeling careers. It was there that Vicky Mikula says the twins attracted the attention of an Asian modeling agency which offered to pay their way to a modeling competition in Shanghai.