All right stop, collaborate and listen: Vanilla Ice was on board a flight from Dubai that landed Wednesday at New York City’s JFK Airport with dozens of sick passengers.
“There is like tons of ambulances and fire trucks and police all over the place,” he wrote in a tweet accompanied by a video. You can hear the rapper telling a fellow passenger in the video, “It must be pretty serious.”
A follow-up tweet included a news video from YouTube about the flight Ice apparently believed he was on:
The former reality show star tweeted that the passengers who are sick are “on the bottom floor” of the aircraft and that he’s “happy” he’s “up top” on the double-decker jet.
Authorities checked the flight after roughly 100 of the 521 passengers complained of illness, including fever and coughing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some members of the flight crew were among those ailing.
That plane reportedly was emptied by 12:30 p.m. local time. But the “Ice, Ice Baby” rapper began sending a series of tweets at 1:41 p.m. about a flight he was on, which made it unclear whether he was referring to the plane from Dubai with sick passengers or another one.
A representative for Vanilla Ice verified that the rapper had been on the plane reviewed by the CDC and that he “was released with all the other passengers that did not exhibit any symptoms.”
“I have no other information about the situation beyond that,” Chuck Quon said in an email to HuffPost. “Also, he is not in NY any longer. He has already flown home.”
Authorities from the CDC, the Port Authority, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and city EMS took passengers’ temperatures on the plane from Dubai and arranged transportation for those who were ill to local hospitals.
“Passengers who are not ill will be allowed to continue with their travel plans, and if necessary will be followed up with by health officials,” the CDC said.
This article has been updated with comment from Vanilla Ice’s agent.