9 passengers sick on Mexico to Miami flight

updated 3:23 p.m. ET June 12, 2007

MIAMI - Health authorities released nine passengers who were ill on a flight from Mexico to Miami International Airport on Tuesday.

Authorities had initially reported 11 sick passengers on the Aeromexico flight from Merida, Mexico, but a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said nine people were complaining of gastrointestinal-type symptoms.

No one was hospitalized, CDC spokesman Von Roebuck said.

Aeromexico spokeswoman Gemma Liebanas said the airline is investigating.

“I think that the people who got sick, it must have been from something they ate at the airport, because no food is served on the flight from Merida to Miami at that hour of the day,” Liebanas said. Airport spokesman Marc Henderson said the plane landed at about 1:10 p.m.

One day earlier, Miami airport authorities had temporarily detained another sick passenger from a British Airways flight arriving in Miami from London, but health experts determined that she was not contagious and did not have an infectious disease.

The woman was believed to have a gastrointestinal illness and was taken to a hospital, Roebuck said.

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