They flu into JFK
Dozen sick on 14-hour jet nightmare
A few violently ill passengers turned a Dubai-to-New York flight into the trip from hell, officials said — leaving furious fellow fliers wondering why the sick people were allowed aboard in the first place.
The apparent flu strain spread like wildfire in the confined space of Emirates Flight 203, a double-decker Airbus A380 superjumbo jet carrying 549 customers and crew for the 14-hour haul, authorities said.
By the time the plane touched down at JFK Airport at around 9:15 a.m., 106 people suffered some classic flu symptoms — fever, coughing and vomiting, said acting city Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot in a press briefing.
“The flight from Dubai to New York City is a very long one, so you can have ongoing transmission in this type of environment,” Barbot said.
When the plane finally landed in Queens, it was greeted by a small army of workers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Port Authority Police Department and the FDNY.
Rapper Vanilla Ice, a passenger on the jet’s upper deck, docu- mented the wild scene on social media.
“There is like tons of ambulances and fire trucks and police all over the place,” the ‘Ice Ice Baby’ performer tweeted with a video showing the packed tarmac. “This is crazy.”
The responders spent roughly three hours painstakingly evaluating each passenger and crew member — including taking the temperature of all 549 — as they decided who could go and who needed further treatment.
“All the passengers were assessed and the vast majority were cleared of any illness and were allowed to continue on remaining legs of their trip,” said Barbot.
Seven crew members and three passengers were taken to Jamaica Hospital, where they remained Wednesday night in stable condition.
Barbot warned that even those who left the flight feeling healthy could still start showing symptoms within the next week.
Although the malady seems to be the garden-variety flu instead of something more serious, skeeved-out passengers who endured the phlegm-filled nightmare railed against the airline for wel- coming the “obviously sick” passengers on board in the first place.
“They should have never let those people on the plane. They were coughing so violently,” said Erin Sykes. “They don’t let a drunk person on the plane; they shouldn’t let sick people on the plane.”
Sykes, a health and fitness expert headed home to Battery Park, said she asked a flight attendant for a mask, only to be told that there were none left as the chorus of contagion filled the cabin.
“What I heard was mostly coughing, very violent, violent deep coughs, phlegm. Just gross,” she said. “We saw a lot of people using the bathroom for an extended period of time . . . The bathrooms were unusable by the end.”
Added fellow flier Hadi Nadimi, 30, of Connecticut, “I’m worried what’s going to happen in the next 72 hours. Am I going to catch something or not?”
Emirates did not respond to a Post inquiry about their policy on allowing visibly ill passengers to board flights.