While someone rushing up to deliver a baby on a plane often serves as film plot inspiration, the situation is quite rare in the real world as almost all airlines have rules prohibiting travel in the last weeks of pregnancy and will ban those who look visibly close to due date from boarding the flight.
For U.S.-based airlines, the cut-off point is usually 36 weeks for domestic flights and 32 weeks for international ones (a typical pregnancy lasts 40 weeks) while those with a doctor's note may fly while up to 38 weeks pregnant.
Related: Pilot video showing just how close planes really fly is freaking out some travelers
But at the start of this week, an emergency labor did take place on a flight from Turkey to France's Marseille on European low-cost carrier Pegasus Airlines. The flight had not yet taken off from Istanbul's Sabiha Gökçen International Airport when a woman started moaning.
@stuartlondon1 How on earth was the mother allowed to fly when she knows her due date, however it's great to see she give birth on the flight safely #flight #istanbul #mother #givebirth #plane #emergency #landing #share #shareyoucare
♬ original sound - stuartlondon1
Customers cheer, bring up baby clothes as paramedics help woman give birth
Footage captured by one of the other passengers on the plane shows other travelers talking and turning around to look as paramedics carry a newborn baby out of the plane; according to early reports from the scene, flight attendants moved the woman to the back of the plane and called off takeoff as she went into labor.
More Travel:
- A new travel term is taking over the internet (and reaching airlines and hotels)
- The 10 best airline stocks to buy now
- Airlines see a new kind of traveler at the front of the plane
While emergency personnel arrived on the scene with the goal of moving her to a nearby hospital, the labor was moving too quickly and the baby was born inside the plane. Another video from the plane shows passengers cheering and one man getting up to bring baby clothing to the mother as a gift.
Many of the other passengers were getting up or turning their necks around to catch a glimpse of the mother or the newborn.
"How on earth was the mother allowed to fly when she knows the due date?" the TikToker behind the @Stuartlondon1 account wrote on the social media platform.
Pegasus had not been responding to requests for comment on the health of the mother and the baby or whether the flight took off after the labor.
This is what happens when you go into labor mid-flight
A similar situation took place on the Chicago-based United Airlines (UAL) -) flight from San Francisco to Hawaii just a few weeks ago after a pregnant woman went into labor halfway through the flight, the pilot turned the plane around and arrived back at San Francisco International Airport before the woman gave birth.
While the woman aboard the Pegasus Airlines flight fortunately went into labor prior to the flight's departure, airlines make serious efforts to avoid such a situation due to its dangers (while flight attendants receiving training on how to help deliver a baby in an emergency, the lack of experts and medical facilities creates an inherently risky situation) and ability to disrupt the flight.
Depending on the airspace in which the birth occurs and a given country's immigration rules, giving birth on an international flight can also create complications around the new child's citizenship.
"The pilots also declare an emergency and request air traffic control to give priority to land in an airport that is close to the destination and divert the aircraft there," former pilot and University of Nevada aviation history professor Dan Bubb once told The Thrillist. "The goal is to land safely and immediately find professional medical care for the passenger."
