PLANE MAKES EMERGENCY LANDING IN FL

Plane makes emergency landing in Florida

• Story Highlights
• Eight passengers fall ill on flight en route from the Dominican Republic to Canada
  
• CDC official: Cause of illness unknown but appears to be food or drink
  
• Flight continues to Edmonton, Alberta, after ill passengers

CNN) -- A plane en route from the Dominican Republic to Canada made an emergency landing Tuesday night in Florida after passengers complained of being sick, officials said.

A passenger from Air Transat Flight 477 is wheeled out of Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport.

Eight passengers were taken to a hospital as a precaution after Air Transat Flight 477 landed at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport about 11 p.m. ET, the Broward County Sheriff's Office said.

Officials said they don't know what sickened the passengers who left Punta Cana in eastern Dominican Republic about 9:30 p.m.

"Due to the multiple symptoms and unknown illness," the sheriff's office said, authorities alerted local health authorities, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the sheriff's office's homeland security unit and federal customs officials. Watch passengers go out on stretchers »

CDC spokeswoman Lola Russell confirmed that eight passengers on a flight had fallen ill.

She said that officials were not sure what caused the illness but that it appeared to have been something the passengers ate or drank. The passengers' illness did not seem to be contagious, Russell said.

Health officials took the sick passengers to a Fort Lauderdale-area hospital. The remaining passengers in the Airbus A310 were evaluated and allowed to continue on their flight to Edmonton, Alberta, the sheriff's office said.

The airline specializes in scheduled and charter flights from Canada to vacation destinations, according to the company's Web site. In the winter, the majority of flights are between Canada and the Caribbean and the United States.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/03/05/emergency.landing/