- Footage from plane show paramedics walking through plane carrying baby
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This is the moment stunned plane passengers looked on in awe after paramedics helped a woman give birth while she was onboard the aircraft.
Footage from the plane, filmed earlier this month, shows a paramedic briskly walking through the plane carrying the newborn baby at Sabiha Gökçen International Airport in Istanbul, Turkey.
The drama unfolded as the Pegasus Airlines plane was making final preparations for take-off for a flight to Marseille in France.
Video shows paramedics charging on to the aircraft to help the mother-to-be with excited passengers craning their necks to see what was happening and chattering excitedly.
One passenger can be seen collecting small items of clothing and heading to the area where the mother gave birth, while a flight attendant can be seen walking away from the crowded area.
Moments later, a female paramedic can be seen carrying the baby – now wrapped in blue cloth – to the front of the plane. The baby does not appear to be making any noise.
A paramedic is seen carrying the newborn baby towards the front of the plane
Passengers were seen looking behind them as medics (right) arrived onto the plane
According to local reports, the passenger’s labour pains started to increase with cabin crew having to provide initial first aid.
She was taken to another part of the aircraft where medics helped her give birth.
The prematurely-born baby was then taken to the hospital via ambulance for further care.
While this birth took place on the tarmac, mid-air births are incredibly rare.
In 2019, a woman gave birth to a baby boy during a three-hour flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
JetBlue Flight 1954 was met on the ground by medical personnel ‘following the onboard delivery of our youngest customer to date,’ the airline said in a statement, according to NBC Miami.
In 2017, a baby boy was given free airline tickets for life after his mother gave birth on a flight from Saudi Arabia to India.
Jose Cicymol went into labour aboard Jet Airways Flight 9W 569 from King Fahd Airport, near Dammam, which took off for Kochi at around 2.55am.
At 8am the flight declared a medical emergency after Ms Cicymol, who was 30 weeks pregnant, went into premature labour.
Medics were seen arriving onto the plane to the cheers of passengers
The plane was diverted to Mumbai but crew soon realised they would not make it in time and appealed for a doctor to come forward.
Fellow passenger and nurse Mini Wilson offered to help, and the boy was born at 8.45am at 35,000ft, the Times of India reports.
Medical support firm MedAire reports that mid-air births occur in roughly one in every 26 million passengers.
Dr. Paulo Alves, the company’s global medical director, told Condé Nast: ‘In-flight childbirth is very, very rare, and when you review the cases they were unexpected—these were premature babies.
He added that giving birth in mid-air comes with its own challenges.
‘It’s not the best place for you to have your child, for many reasons. For one thing, the air is thinner, so it’s harder for the baby to breathe. It’s like giving birth to a premature child in Mexico City, altitude-wise.’
On top of this, the likelihood of there being specialists on-hand to help with the birth is exceedingly low, meaning that complicated procedures like C-Sections are near impossible to undertake, even if they are necessary for the safety of the mother and the baby.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
