[AnIInWon]

Girl, 16, kicked off plane for coughing

March 30, 2007

A 16-year-old girl who caught a cold during a school trip to New York was kicked off her flight home because she was coughing.

Rachel Collier was removed from the Continental Airlines plane as it was about to leave Newark, N.J., for Honolulu earlier this week. She had fallen asleep after boarding the plane with about three dozen classmates and woke up coughing and gasping for breath as it was about to take off.

"Everyone was looking at me," she said. "I couldn't talk because I lost my voice coughing so much. I was panicking."

The flight attendants gave her water, and a doctor on the flight said she would be OK to make the 10-hour flight. But the captain returned the aircraft to the gate to drop off the girl and one of her teachers.

Rachel said she started crying when the captain told her to leave. She and the teacher finally made it home the next day.

Teacher Maile Kawamura, a chaperone for the spring break trip to New York and Washington, D.C., said she was shocked. The two didn't know what to do or where to stay, she said. They finally found accommodations in New York and bought clothes and toiletries.

Continental said in a statement that Collier was coughing "uncontrollably" on the plane Tuesday and that "the captain felt he was acting in the best interest of the passenger and other passengers on the flight."

Rachel's mother, Stephanie Collier, said Continental has agreed to reimburse her daughter's expenses incurred during the extra day, including the cost of the hotel.

"I felt it was really extreme for a coughing fit," she said. "We've all had coughing fits."

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070330/...ng_passenger_1


Detained air passengers had seasonal flu

March 27, 2007

Passengers on a flight from Hong Kong were allowed to get off a plane at Newark Liberty International Airport Monday afternoon after being held for two hours because some passengers reported feeling ill, officials said.

The Continental flight arrived in New Jersey at 2 p.m. Monday, and passengers disembarked about 4 p.m. after officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed them off, said Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport.

Continental Flight 98 departed Hong Kong with 272 passengers.

During the flight, the cabin crew noticed that several passengers appeared ill, and airline officials notified health authorities in the U.S., said Dave Messing, a spokesman for Houston-based Continental Airlines.

CDC spokeswoman Karen Hunter said seven passengers boarded the plane with flu-like symptoms and during the 15-hour flight, other passengers began to exhibit the symptoms as well. She did not have an exact number.

Emergency services personnel who were sent to the plane to interview the passengers about their symptoms passed on the information to a CDC Global Migration and Quarantine representative at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Hunter said.

"It was determined the symptoms were consistent with possible seasonal influenza and there was no reason to believe it was more serious," said CDC spokesman Glen Nowak. Nowak said the seven passengers who boarded the plane already sick had visited a hospital outpatient center and were diagnosed with the flu, but it wasn't clear whether that visit took place in Hong Kong or the U.S.

The airline and the CDC believe the ill passengers were part of a group of more than 80 tourists who sailed together on a river cruise in Asia.

The final destination of the group, after switching planes in Newark, was Montreal, Canada.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20...e_passengers_1