Emirates Plane Quarantined at JFK Airport After Report of Sick Passengers
Centers for Disease Control working to find cause of the illness; 10 people taken to hospital
A plane from Dubai was quarantined after landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in a rare step after passengers on board reported feeling sick, according to airport and airline officials familiar with the matter.
Emirates Airline flight 203 landed Wednesday morning after 9 a.m. Eastern, and Port Authority Police and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had set up a staging area to check passengers, airport officials said. At least 10 people of the more than 400 on board reported feeling sick.
After several underwent medical checks, all passengers eventually were cleared to enter the U.S., the airline said. Seven crew members and three passengers were transported to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens for treatment, according to the airline and a spokesman from the New York City Fire Department.
The Airbus SE A380 superjumbo plane was met by firetrucks on the runway.
It wasn’t clear what illness CDC officials were concerned about. In a statement, an official from the CDC said the agency was working to find the cause of the illness. Passengers were “reporting an unspecified illness,” the official said.
During the flight, the cockpit crew informed airline dispatchers about “flulike symptoms” experienced by some people on board, and the information was relayed to the airport authority, said a government official familiar with the details. At that point, the CDC was alerted, the official said.
The pilot never declared an in-flight emergency though before landing requested through air-traffic control medical assistance on the ground. Airlines often declare emergencies when crew or passengers become sick in flight, though pilots have discretion in how they handle such situations.
Initial reports from Emirates, according to this official, indicated that some type of food-borne contaminants appeared to be the culprit.
A passenger on the flight, Larry Coben, said passengers didn’t really know what was going on while they waited. “We saw nothing and knew less,” he said in an interview. “Just added two hours to my 17 of flying.”
Dubai-based Emirates operates five daily flights to New York, serving JFK and Newark, N.J., airports, and the airline has grown quickly across the globe. It takes advantage of its hub in Dubai to shuttle passengers between Asia, Europe and the West, courting high-end fliers with amenities in first and business class. Emirates, which apologized for the disruption, said it expects to operate the return flight, though with about three hours delay.