Baby Born on Flight to Salt Lake City

Posted by jeannesager on December 6th, 2009 at 9:44 am

southwest airlines 300x199 Baby Born on Flight to Salt Lake City A flight to Salt Lake City had to be diverted this weekend when a surprise guest appeared on board: a newborn baby.

Due in January, the little boy decided to arrive just outside the Denver International Airport in the galley of a Southwest Airlines plane, with a doctor on his way to a skiing vacation helping Mom with the delivery.

Her husband and other kids, who were also on the flight, disembarked to join her at a hospital in Denver, while the rest of the folks on the plane continued on to Salt Lake City.

You hear a few stories like this a year, but ABC News pulled up an interesting statistic: you’re twenty-six times more likely to have someone die on your flight than be born. A study of more than ten thousand medical emergencies aboard European flights between 2002 and 2007 by German researchers found only two births but fifty-two deaths.

The official recommendation from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology is women can safely travel in an airplane up to their thirty-sixth week, although Southwest stretches it to the thirty-eighth.

Image: Stu Seeger via flickr

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