This Passenger Yelled Out Inflight He Had Ebola. Watch The Blue Hazmat Suits Come Onboard!

A passenger onboard US Airways Flight 845 (the video’s notes incorrectly identify it as flight 85) from Philadelphia to Punta Cana identified himself as having ebola.

This same passenger has never seen the movie Airplane!


About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. It’s Blue Man Group from the State Sponsors EPA rock band that gets 24 hour airplay: The Obama Housing Project Ghetto Blasters.

    Obama’s War on Fliers because their anything but black, continues. If you disagree with Obama, you’re a racist, says the Democrats. Remember that, kids. It will be in your textbooks written by Lois Lerner.

  2. Scary when the hazmat guys turn up. No laughing matter. Unfortunately the fear over ebola is raising the racist under current that still exists some of the less well educated parts of the country.

  3. It’s political because the right wing believes Obama hasn’t done anything to prevent it and won’t do anything.

  4. This is beyond ridiculous. Ebola is a scary and dangerous disease, but it is very hard to contract in western culture. END OF STORY. You could sit next to an infected patient for an entire flight and still be okay (assuming he doesn’t sneeze right onto your face). It is spreading in Africa because of extremely poor hygienic standards with the way they had historically cared for their sick and dead. This is pure FUD and the gov’t should start getting on the news and media for continuing to spread hysteria.

    Sure, can we do a little more like screening for temperature at airports, I guess, but that doesn’t do much good if it is not at every airport and it doesn’t help for passengers who are not connecting direct from Africa (as was the case for the Dallas patient).

    Alert me when their is an airborne flu disease that can survive for extended period outside of the body which results in deaths and there is a week-long incubation period so you don’t even know you have it until it is too late.

  5. Attn: Political Idiots !

    I suppose you want Obama to have every passenger examined by a doctor upon arrival?
    Give your head a shake.

  6. am i the only one laughing so hard i’m crying? this is the epitome of ridiculous. ummm… guys, what about the plane full of people?!? lol

    this is how dumbed down America has become. good grief.

  7. I’m guessing this was a prank or some sort of horrible joke.

    also whoa, whats up with the el cheapo ‘hazmat’ suits. if I didnt know any better I’d say these were just blue mississippi mud tarps. surely, americans cant be in that bad of financial straits if cutbacks are down to this level.

    abby — have you never seen a hazmat team or even watched a movie before? just because other ppl on the plane might be infected, first responders wont risk their lives to get infected.

  8. First of all, I’m shocked at the conservative slant of many of the comments on boarding area — this ebola thing has nothing to do with politics. Every few years, there’s a dangerous disease (like Sars years ago) from which many people die — and it’s extremely important that it not start spreading here. All of you important frequent flyers and business people are benefiting every day from the government, and the security, protection and services it provides, not to mention you use the roads and airports built by taxpayer dollars.
    And no, ebola does not just spread when there’s poor hygiene. If you touch somebody with full-blown ebola or come in contact with their blood or vomit (which is easy because they bleed and vomit all over the place once the disease is in full swing) you will very easily contract the disease. It’s not airborne — if it was, we’d all be dead already — but it is still extremely dangerous and deadly 90% of the time.
    About the hazmat suits – there are many different types and as long as properly sealed, they are adequate – don’t expect them to look like they do in the movies. If somebody on a plane says they have ebola, then the hazmat suits have to come on and they need to make sure. Can you imagine the public outcry if they didn’t???

  9. Man self identifying himself as having Ebola needs to be in hospital or jail (and presented the bill for the costs associated with this little stunt) depending on whether he was truthful about Ebola. Seeing videos like this regularly on airplane blogs reminds me of a stunt like this that occurred on one of my flights and just how crazy so many people are (even if he has Ebola to announce that once on the flight is not right).

  10. @augias,

    This “scare” has everything to do with politics, especially under Obama. Ever hear of ObamaCare? If ObamaCare wasn’t around, the CDC would do everything possible to keep America safe. Under ObamaCare, it’s do everything possible to get funds from that system.

    Give Moochele her way, and all First Class meals will be served with calories scales.

  11. @ED: complete nonsense. i love how you neocons just fabricate whatever alarmist notion pops in your head. Obamacare has actually been filling funding gaps for the CDC that became liabilities because of sequestration implemented as a direct result of Republican obstructionist tactics.

    Get your head out of your ass.

  12. What @Yev said. The sound recording was not good but it does sound like somebody explained, perhaps several times, that he said “Sorry I just came from Africa sorry sorry.” We mostly see the blue suits & can’t tell who is answering the questions but…everybody is laughing and giggling and taking videos. So it seems like a silly comment that went wrong & everybody on the plane damn well knows it. If the gov’t wants to send out hazmats every time a black guy makes stupid joke or happens to sneeze during hay fever season, the gov’t needs to foot the bill. The people calling for the accused passengers to be billed and blamed haven’t thought this through. ANYBODY can make a comment that somebody else can misunderstand. ANYBODY. If individuals walking on eggshells and never making jokes could prevent mob hysteria, there would have been no witch panic, no satanic panic, no McCarthyism…eh, I’m sure we can all think of many more examples.

  13. “Republican obstructionist tactics” LOL translation: not agreeing with an extreme left wing agenda.

  14. Some of you are delusional.

    1) Obama has no more control over Ebola and its spread than you do. Even banning West Africans via air wouldn’t stop people from coming here; they’d just come through Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, etc.

    2) The Obama-Hate expressed here is pathological. Get a grip. You’ve lost all sense of propriety.

    3) The latent racism that I detect under this, the wishing that you could stop “other” people from entering this country, ought to qualify those expressing it to free mental health care for life. Why? To protect the rest of us from your xenophobia turning into paranoid schizophrenia, and a danger to us all that you will act out on your obvious anger amid delusions.

    End of rant. Flames cheerfully ignored while I nurse the cold I got this week on a plane, which is not ebola, but is far more irritating than worrying about ebola, and which Obama isn’t responsble for, either.

  15. Really surprised that it took 19 posts before someone played the race card.

    If ebola is of no concern, then why did Barry send 3,000 of our troops to West Africa to help out?

  16. @Pete: who said it was of no concern? get the voices in your head checked out

    @Robert Hanson: the Budget Control Act of 2011 passed the Senate with unanimous consent. hardly an extreme left wing agenda. try again, idiot.

  17. -Of course Ebola is of concern. To everybody. And of course avoiding exchange of bodily fluids is how you escape infection. Wouldn’t YOU wear a hazmat suit if you were called to an unknown situation to isolate a potential carrier?

    -The only “race card” here is the strongly hinted insinuation that if ANYBODY from abroad wants to enter the US, they should somehow have the Federal Government give them a test to determine if they’re Ebola-positive. And of course, 99%+ of the population of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone is black, but you may think that’s a coincidence. I don’t. In any case, even if this was done at airports, what about people driving across in Vermont? Or San Ysidro? Or entering the Bahamas, then flying in? Should this screening apply to EVERYONE from a foreign country? How about Puerto Rico or American Samoa? Heck, why not everyone from Alaska? How about everyone from Texas, now that we’ve identified a REAL American Ebola carrier was there?

    Better get real certain of what you mean before you start blaming people for not taking adequate protections….

    -“Barry” sent troops as a humanitarian effort to help out three little countries in West Africa where this potentially virulent virus is running amok, at the request of their governments. The President’s HSA ordered temperature monitors and interviews at five principal airports that handle the bulk of arrivals for passengers from the infected area, much the same as WE are screened with temperature monitors in HKG, NRT, and other international airports (but not typically here). What have they done wrong, or intrusive?

    -Anybody who blames Ebola on Obama is delusional. Anybody who thinks the Federal Government isn’t taking steps to control Ebola for the benefit of AMERICANS isn’t thinking critically.

  18. Now you’re just making up stuff. There was no insinuation hinted whatsoever.

    Shut down flights and other transportation out of the hot zone countries and you don’t have to worry about where the infected people (white, black, striped or some other color) are entering this country.

  19. @pavel

    Keep up your Sprint flier mentality, Obama will have the shoe-shining job opening up. I’ll tell the chef to remove the ObamaCare dip on my heels for you, okay.

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