Dallas To Nashville Passengers Remain ‘Fairly Calm’ Despite On-Flight Ebola Scare

An American Airlines flight from Dallas taxied to a remote part of Nashville International Airport and only arrived at the gate after being given the all clear from the Centers for Disease Control. This photo is of a different plane. Credit: Aero Icarus via Flickr

A plane-load of passengers from Dallas sat on a Nashville runway until early Monday morning, waiting to see if someone who’d gotten sick mid-flight might have Ebola.

Flight attendants were taking drink orders when a man had what passengers described as a seizure. A doctor on board took care of him in the rear part of the plane. And Ebola didn’t cross most people’s mind, said passenger Nicki Smallwood, a teacher in Metro Schools.

“Nobody was talking about Ebola until they came on and said the CDC was going to come on and check this out,” Smallwood said. “Everybody was like, ‘ok, this is going to get interesting.'”

The plane had just departed Dallas, which has two confirmed cases of Ebola.

Once on the ground in Nashville, the American Airlines plane was taken to a remote part of Nashville International Airport where passengers waited in their seats until 3 a.m. Smallwood said they finally got the all clear from the Centers for Disease Control after someone in protective gear cracked the air-tight hatch and passed a thermometer to the doctor. She took the sick man’s temperature, which came back normal.

“We just sat there for three hours for no reason, it seemed like,” Smallwood said.

Despite the serious circumstances, passengers remained “relatively calm,” said Katey Earles, a teacher in Nashville returning from a college reunion in Texas. But she said the CDC could find a more efficient way to handle cases in which passengers get sick.

“If this is the way they’re going to respond, I would calmly and politely suggest finding another way to do it,” Earles said.

Here’s what the Metro Department of Public Health said:

[box]A passenger on an American Airlines flight traveling from Dallas to Nashville had a medical issue. That individual was taken to Vanderbilt Medical Center. The Metro Public Health Department has been in contact with the Tennessee Department of Health. TDH confirmed the person who had the medical issue had no history of contact with anyone with Ebola in Dallas and had no travel history to Africa. There is no concern that this individual has Ebola and there is no risk to other passengers on the plane.[/box]