Vanilla Ice on board plane that was quarantined at JFK airport

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

An airliner from Dubai with 10 passengers and crew members who were hospitalized with flu-like symptoms was carrying 1990s rapper Vanilla Ice.

A manager for the rapper confirmed on Wednesday that he was on the Emirates flight that landed at New York’s Kennedy Airport.

Ice, whose real name is Robert Van Winkle, used Facebook to post a video of the emergency response to an initial report that dozens of people could be sick. On Twitter, he described looking out the window to see several ambulances, firetrucks and police vehicles converge on the plane.

He also said he was thankful he was on the top deck to the twin-deck jumbo jet. He said the sick people were on what he called the “bottom floor.”

The Emirates flight landed around 9:10 a.m.

Video from news helicopters showed the jet sitting on the tarmac surrounded by emergency vehicles and ground control personnel.

Representatives of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were on the scene.

Eric Phillips, a spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, tweeted that the flight stopped in Mecca, which is experiencing a flu outbreak, and “early indications point to that as a possibility.”

 

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