A plane has been quarantined after numerous passengers became ill aboard a flight from Dubai that arrived at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport this morning, the mayor’s office says.
The doubledecker Airbus A380 landed shortly after 9 a.m. ET with about 500 passengers aboard, according to a spokesperson for Emirates airline.
She said 10 passengers had taken ill on the flight and “were immediately checked by local health authorities and those needing medical attention will be attended to,” an airline spokesperson said in a statement.
Larry Coben, who identified himself as one of the passengers, uploaded photos on Twitter showing dozens of police and emergency vehicles waiting outside the plane on the tarmac.
A row of ambulances <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/EK203?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#EK203</a> <a href=”https://t.co/iXn1bbjmad”>pic.twitter.com/iXn1bbjmad</a>
—@LarryCoben
“All we have been told is that there are some sick passengers and that we need to remain on board,” Coben said in a message to Reuters via Twitter.
Representatives of the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention were on the scene, a spokesperson for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
Eric Phillips, a spokesperson for de Blasio, tweeted that the flight stopped in Mecca, which is experiencing a flu outbreak, and “early indications point to that as a possibility.”
A New York Police Department counterterrorism division tweeted it was monitoring what appeared to be a “medical situation.”
With files from Reuters