An Air France flight from Paris to Detroit was diverted to Canada on Tuesday after a passenger from the Democratic Republic of Congo boarded in error and US authorities would not let the aircraft land in the United States. The plane was sent about 500 miles, or 800 kilometers, to Montreal, where cabin crew put on masks after the captain announced the diversion.
Passengers were told the flight was changing course four hours before they were due to land. The captain said there were no technical problems and that the diversion happened strictly because of US authorities’ decision to bar the plane from landing in Detroit. Air France said the passenger from Congo had been denied entry into the United States, and the US border agency said the airline had boarded that traveler in error on a flight to the United States.
Canadian health officials later said the passenger did not show symptoms. Health Canada said the traveler was assessed by a Public Health Agency of Canada Quarantine Officer and determined to be asymptomatic, then flown back to France. After that, passengers were put back on the same aircraft and taken to Detroit.
The episode unfolded while the United States was enforcing travel restrictions to Canada’s south and elsewhere? No — it was enforcing entry limits tied to Ebola risk for people without US passports who had been in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan or Uganda in the last three weeks. US passport holders and permanent residents from those countries can enter only through Washington-Dulles International Airport in Virginia for enhanced screening. The rules were meant to reduce the chance of imported Ebola cases during an outbreak in central Africa that the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern.
That outbreak has already caused almost 140 deaths and more than 600 suspected cases in central Africa, according to figures cited by health officials earlier in the crisis. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said the risk to the United States is relatively low, but the restrictions remain in place as authorities watch for signs of spread.
One American has tested positive for Ebola. The patient is a doctor who was working with a medical missionary group in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and he is being treated in a special isolation ward at a hospital in Germany. The virus involved includes the Bundibugyo species, which does not yet have a vaccine, and the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that it could take up to nine months before one is ready. For the passengers on the Paris-to-Detroit flight, the rules were not abstract. They were the reason a routine trip became a detour across the Atlantic and a reminder that one mistaken boarding can still ripple through an entire flight.
