Woman Gives Birth on Southwest Flight
The baby boy was delivered with the help of a doctor aboard the airplane.
Dec. 4, 2009— -- A woman flying on a Southwest Airlines flight Friday entered a whole different type of a mile-high club: She gave birth to a baby boy at about 30,000 feet over the country.
Southwest Airlines flight 441 from Chicago's Midway Airport to Salt Lake City was about 100 miles north of Denver when the pilot asked if anyone onboard had medical training.
A doctor and two nurses on board helped deliver the baby at the back of the plane with the help of flight attendants and an in-flight medical radio service.
"We now have a new passenger," a flight attendant announced on the jet's public address system, according to KMGH.
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The doctor, John Saran of Illinois, was heading to Park City for a ski vacation. In an interview with ABC News, he said that the flight crew was "great." The group escorted the woman to the plane's rear galley for privacy.
"We thought we were going to have enough time before landing before the baby came," Saran said. "It went smoothly, the mother was great, it was an easy delivery, everything went in a normal manner."
"We used the shoe strings, actually the shoe strings from my shoes to tie the umbilical cord so this new baby," Saran added. A pair of children's scissors was eventually used to cut the cord.
The doctor said he heard the baby was due in January, maybe about a month early. He said the baby was about five pounds.
The plane made an emergency medical landing at Denver International Airport, where the plane was met by medical personnel. The mother and her baby were taken off the plane and taken to the Medical Center of Aurora, where a spokeswoman says they're doing fine.
"It sounded like everything went pretty regular -- nothing out of the ordinary," Denver Fire Division Chief Charles McMillan told ABC affiliate KMGH-TV in Denver.
The baby's father and other children in the family who were on the flight also got off the plane in Denver. The names of the family members were not immediately released.
The flight continued on to Salt Lake City without any further incident.
Southwest spokesman Beth Harbin told ABC News: "You know how these things go -- babies have their own timetable".
Harbin said a decision to fly during pregnancy is "between a mom and her doctor."
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