Passengers on 2 Flights to Philadelphia Fall Ill

There was a health scare at Philadelphia International Airport Thursday after two separate American Airlines flights from Europe arrived with sick passengers—the day after an Emirates plane was quarantined at JFK because of passenger illness. The Philadelphia flights arrived from Munich and Paris but as with the Emirates flight, some of the passengers with flu-like symptoms were returning from Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where there has been an outbreak of flu, NBC Philadelphia reports. Officials say all 250 passengers and crew on the Philadelphia flights were held for a medical review out of an "abundance of caution," reports Reuters.

The CDC says it worked with local health officials to "evaluate and test the ill passengers for influenza and other respiratory illnesses." The agency says 12 passengers "reported sore throat and cough; none were identified with fever." Nobody was hospitalized and the 12 passengers who were tested for flu have now been released. As for the Emirates flight, authorities say 11 passengers on the flight from Dubai were hospitalized and treated for influenza or other common respiratory diseases, the New York Times reports. The mayor's office says the passengers will be kept in the hospital as a precaution until they know the results of tests for other viruses. (Vanilla Ice says it was "chaos" on the quarantined plane.)