Nereida Araujo, a passenger on board an American Airlines flight from TPA (Tampa) to CLT (Charlotte), unexpectedly gave birth on the tarmac shortly after landing.
The local radio station WSOC reported that Araujo was 38 weeks pregnant and cleared to fly by her doctor. However, her water broke on approach to Charlotte airport.
“I was sleeping and I felt like a pop in my lower back,” Araujo told WSOC.
“I just felt like liquid and I woke my husband up.”
Born on the runway
The healthy baby girl was born just after flight 868 touched down in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Despite it being Thanksgiving, one of the busiest travel days in the United States, the Charlotte Fire Department and medic helped deliver the baby safely on the runway.
According to a spokesperson for the airline, there was a call for medical professionals to assist during the flight of just under two hours, and the baby was delivered shortly after.
Her mother decided that the baby’s name should befit her unusual birthplace, calling her: Lizyana Sky Taylor.
“Baby Sky decided to enter the world on a plane. Thanks to everybody who assisted us with love & care.”
Nereida Araujo, AA Passenger, and new Mother
Due to the need for both clearance by an expectant mother’s doctor and the airline, babies being born on planes are exceptionally rare.
Officials say mom and baby are both doing well.
Another Sky baby
In 1991 Deborah Owen, who was flying back to the UK from work in Accra, Ghana, went into labour six weeks before her due date.
Owen first alerted staff on-board that she thought her baby was coming somewhere over Algeria, but the captain told her to ‘try to hold on’. It was not until she was told the aircraft had passed Paris that she could hold on no longer.
That’s when baby Shona Kirsty Yves (SKY) was born, with perhaps one of the world’s most peculiar passports.
Under place of birth, instead of the likes of a city or town name, it states “on an aeroplane 10 miles south of Mayfield, Sussex”.
What the document does not note is that she was delivered at 7000 feet, above the ground in the first-class cabin of a Boeing 747!
According to CN Traveller, fewer than 60 recorded incidents of babies born on planes. This is in spite of 3.5 billion passengers taking to the skies each year.
Do you know anyone who has given birth on a plane or at the airport?
Let us know – email editor@karryon.com.au