The re-routing of Wednesday night’s Air France flight from Paris to Detroit Metro Airport was a bizarre end to a long travel day.
“It doesn’t take, you know, a lot of thought to figure out that we got somebody onboard from the Congo, where the Ebola virus is,” Mike Reed, a passenger on Flight 378, said at his home in Ann Arbor on Wednesday.
The flight was diverted to Montréal because a passenger from the Democratic Republic of Congo was on board.
The diversion comes days after the CDC issued an emergency order restricting entry for most non-U.S. citizens who had recently been in the DRC, South Sudan, or Uganda amid concerns over the recent Ebola outbreak.
Reed was on the flight traveling back from Spain on Wednesday (May 20) and had just gone through a seven-hour layover in Paris.
When he boarded the Boeing 777, he quickly fell asleep on the transatlantic flight and woke up to a surprise a few hours later.
“Everything seemed normal, but I had the flight tracker on the screen, right where it shows you where the plane is going,” he said. “My first thought was, I’m on the wrong plane.”
Back on the ground, Reed’s daughter, Alexandra Lopez, took to TikTok after learning on Reddit that the flight had been diverted.
She figured out that the diversion had something to do with the Congolese passenger.
“I don’t know why she did that,” Reed joked. “But she was clearly worried about me.”
Once on the ground in Montréal, Reed was like the rest of the passengers, wondering what was going on. They eventually got the passenger off the plane without incident.
“I was a little worried because all the crew members had masks on, and when I asked them if they had any more masks, they said no,” Reed said. “I kept waiting for somebody to come by, and nobody came by, and then I found out they took them out the back door.”
After an hour on the ground in Quebec, the flight finally made its way to Metro Airport.
It finally landed just after 8 p.m.
“I thought maybe we’d have to get off the plane, or there would be some information about symptom tracking going forward,” Reed said. “There was none of that.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection says the Congolese passenger was mistakenly allowed to board the flight in Paris.
That passenger has not been identified, and, as of now, there is no evidence that they tested positive for Ebola.
Reed was definitely a good sport about this ordeal and was just happy to be home.
“Other than normal jet lag, I’m feeling pretty good. I’m happy to see my grandchildren,” Reed said.
--> Flight to Detroit diverted to Canada due to Ebola concerns -- What we know