NY Daily News

It was a 14-hour nightmare at 40,000 feet, packed with dozens of infected passengers who left bathrooms covered in vomit.

The 521 passengers of Emirates airline Flight 203 were immediately placed under quarantine after touching down at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday, with a plethora of sick customers aboard when the plane reached Kennedy Airport from Dubai.

“People were coughing and spreading germs,” said passenger Erin Sykes, 36, of Manhattan. “It was everywhere … I would say say a good 50% in economy class were sick. The people behind me, I could literally feel (them) coughing.”

A number of nauseous passengers were vomiting throughout the long trip, and “the bathrooms were totally unusable by the end,” said Sykes, who covered her head with a blanket to ward off germs. “The bathrooms were gross. Just gross.”

Three passengers and seven crew members were taken to Jamaica Hospital with flu-like symptoms for “further medical care and evaluation,” the airline said via Twitter. “All passengers were screened by local health authorities prior to disembarkation.”

Among those who emerged germ free from the mess was rapper Vanilla Ice.

“So I just landed in New York coming back from Dubai and now I’m stuck on the runway with like 1000 police, ambulances, fire trucks,” he said via Twitter, including a short video clip of the emergency vehicles. “This is crazy.”

In a later tweet, the rapper said he avoided the unidentified bug simply because his seat was on the top floor of the double-decker plane. He estimated the number of ill passengers down below at about 100.

Passenger Hadi Nadimi, 33, of Waterbury, Conn., knew something was amiss when he saw the flight attendants rushing frantically around near the cockpit.

“Finally they told us everybody’s sick,” said Nadimi. “Why did you take that long to tell us? It was iffy from the get-go. They knew right away there were a lot of sick people on the plane.”

Nadimi, though feeling fine as he left the Queens airport, was nervous about whether he contracted something during the flight.

“What’s going to happen in the next 72 hours?” he asked. “Am I going to catch something? I’m ready to go home and take a shower.”

The Airbus A380 was moved to an area away from a terminal and quarantined, while an investigation continues into what caused the coughing, high fever and nausea — and how it spread so fast.

“CDC is aware of an Emirates flight arriving at JFK this morning with some passengers who are reporting an unspecified illness,” a CDC spokesman said. “CDC is working with local authorities to investigate and will provide additional information when it is available.”

A City Hall spokesman said that some of the sickened passengers came from Mecca, which is currently experiencing a flu outbreak.

CDC personnel had entered the plane shortly after its arrival and were handing out intake forms. Passenger Larry Coben tweeted that he and the other travelers were ordered to stay in their seats as ambulances and police vehicles drove around the stopped plane. The crew exited first, and Cohen said he was off the plane and getting his temperature taken about 90 minutes after touchdown.

Sykes said some passengers appeared ill even before the flight departed Dubai.

“Like really nasty colds,” she said. “I asked (a) stewardess for a mask before we even took off but there were none.”