Boston International Airport was at the center of a ‘poisoning’ scare on Sunday after reports that passengers on two separate flights fell mysteriously ill.
Unverified reports online claimed one Delta flight coming from Paris at 1.53pm had 10 ill people on-board, while 10 minutes later a second Avianca flight from El Salvador was reported to have seven sick passengers, including a vomiting child.
Users on X reacting to the news blamed everything from carbon monoxide poisoning to contaminated ice machines or even an infectious disease.
There was just one problem with the reports, they were almost completely wrong.
Officials at the airport did confirm by Monday that officials had met people coming off the Delta flight and that the CDC had been contacted ‘out of an abundance of caution’. But they also said the illnesses were much less widespread.
On the Delta flight, two attendants were taken to the hospital after suffering from ‘lightheadedness’ and later discharged — the CDC said.
And on the Avianca flight, a vomiting child was seen by medical workers at the airport, before then being sent to their transfer to Oslo, Norway.
No other injuries or illnesses were reported by the CDC, airlines or airport.
The claims were posted online by the X account ‘Boston Area Public Safety Alerts’, and viewed more than 1.2million times.
The account — which has 15,000 followers — is run by Dean Malloy, 51, who is a digital product owner for a large financial services company.
He says the information on the channel is unofficial, but is picked up from listening to scanners — radio receivers that allow someone to listen to two-way radio calls from emergency services. None of the information on these is confirmed as fact.
The CDC told the Boston Globe in a statement that ‘two airline crew members experienced lightheadedness’ on the Delta flight.
‘They were transported to a local hospital for further evaluation,’ it said. ‘The hospital found no evidence of a contagious disease of public health concern, and both crew members were discharged.’
On the Avianca flight, they added: ‘The child had no other known symptoms or exposures. The child quickly recovered and was not transported to a hospital.’
A spokeswoman for Massport, which runs the airport, said: ‘Massport responded to two flights (Delta and Avianca) that came in around the same time yesterday afternoon with various illnesses.
‘We reached out to the CDC out of an abundance of caution.’
A spokesperson for Delta also said: ‘No customers reported any illness.’
One person responding to the post on X said: ‘Sounds like Covid. Thanks to the airline company CEOs, mask mandates on airplanes were abandoned. This is your new normal. Enjoy!’
A second said, ‘Did they eat the fish?’, and a third added, ‘quarantine these people until you know what illness is spreading’.
Boston Logan International Airport was at the center of concerns in January 2020 at the start of the Covid pandemic, after a student infected with the virus traveled through it on the way to one of the area’s university’s.
