NEW YORK: Jitters in the US over Ebola were underlined yesterday after an air passenger’s joke sparked a full-on alert, while another plane was quarantined at Las Vegas airport because someone vomited onboard. In the joke incident, a Hazmat (hazardous materials) team in blue suits boarded a US Airways Flight from Philadelphia to the Dominican Republic on Wednesday.
A passenger was reported to have said: “Hey, I’ve got Ebola, you’re screwed.”
After the flight reached its destination, a member of the cabin crew requested all passengers sit down before the Hazmat squad arrived. “It’s going to look worse than it is,” the attendant spoke over the intercom as she sought to calm nerves.
“I’ve done this for 36 years. I think the man that has said this is an idiot,” she added. Footage of the incident went viral on the Internet, and was viewed nearly 3.3 million times by late afternoon yesterday since it was uploaded to YouTube.
