Plane quarantined at JFK airport amid reports of sick passengers

A plane has been quarantined amid reports a number of passengers have become ill aboard a flight from Dubai that arrived at New York’s Kennedy Airport.

The Emirates flight landed at JFK at about 9.10am (2.10pm BST).

The airline said about 10 passengers were sick and were getting medical attention “as a precaution”.

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

A spokesman for New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said representatives of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention are on the scene.

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

A New York Police counter-terrorism division tweeted that it is monitoring what appeared to be a “medical situation”.