NY Daily News
It was a 14-hour nightmare at
The 521 passengers of Emirates airline Flight 203 were
immediately placed under quarantine after touching down at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday,
with a plethora of sick customers aboard when the plane reached
“People were coughing and spreading germs,” said passenger
Erin Sykes, 36, of
A number of nauseous passengers were vomiting throughout the long trip, and “the bathrooms were totally unusable by the end,” said Sykes, who covered her head with a blanket to ward off germs. “The bathrooms were gross. Just gross.”
Three passengers and seven crew members were taken to
Among those who emerged germ free from the mess was rapper Vanilla Ice.
“So I just landed in
In a later tweet, the rapper said he avoided the unidentified bug simply because his seat was on the top floor of the double-decker plane. He estimated the number of ill passengers down below at about 100.
Passenger Hadi Nadimi, 33, of
“Finally they told us everybody’s sick,” said Nadimi. “Why did you take that long to tell us? It was iffy from the get-go. They knew right away there were a lot of sick people on the plane.”
Nadimi, though feeling fine as he left the
“What’s going to happen in the next 72 hours?” he asked. “Am I going to catch something? I’m ready to go home and take a shower.”
The Airbus A380 was moved to an area away from a terminal and quarantined, while an investigation continues into what caused the coughing, high fever and nausea — and how it spread so fast.
“CDC is aware of an Emirates flight arriving at JFK this morning with some passengers who are reporting an unspecified illness,” a CDC spokesman said. “CDC is working with local authorities to investigate and will provide additional information when it is available.”
A City Hall spokesman said that some of the sickened
passengers came from
CDC personnel had entered the plane shortly after its arrival and were handing out intake forms. Passenger Larry Coben tweeted that he and the other travelers were ordered to stay in their seats as ambulances and police vehicles drove around the stopped plane. The crew exited first, and Cohen said he was off the plane and getting his temperature taken about 90 minutes after touchdown.
Sykes said some passengers appeared ill even before the
flight departed
“Like really nasty colds,” she said. “I asked (a) stewardess for a mask before we even took off but there were none.”