Baby Born While On Approach to JFK

[Matt Molnar]

From today's Daily News:

Baby is flying high after onboard birth

This is one crying infant who was actually welcome aboard a plane.

A baby boy was born on a British West Indies Airways flight from Trinidad to New York this week, with an assist from a midwife who helped deliver the child several thousand feet in the air.

Baby Bwee - whose name comes from the airline's nickname - arrived at 2 a.m. Tuesday, just 15 minutes before Flight 500 touched down at Kennedy Airport.

"The son has a very healthy appetite," said BWIA spokeswoman Dionne Ligoure. "All that flying must have made him very hungry."

She said the flight crew and midwife, Phyllis Robinson, who was traveling on her own, sprang into action when Candy Midtlyng, 33, went into in-flight labor.

"There was a real sense of joy once there was a cry from the baby," Ligoure said. "This really doesn't happen too often."

Midtlyng and Baby Bwee checked out of Jamaica Hospital in Queens yesterday, a hospital spokesman said.

Midtlyng is a Trinidad-born U.S. resident. The baby will be entitled to apply for U.S. citizenship, said Shawn Saucier, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Jose Martinez

Originally published on July 21, 2005

[SengaB]

JFK should rename the Outer Marker for 22L to the baby's name as it was the approach the BWA 737 took to JFK. It will have to have 5 letters though. :)
Senga

[cancidas]

senga, how about BEWWE... lol...


in all seriousness, this is why most airlines discourace pregnant women to fly in the final trimester of pregnancy. airline cabin crews are not trained nor equipped to handle a childbirth inflight. thankfully, in this case there was someone who knew what to do.

[AAGold]

Happens more frequently than you might believe. I shot an inbound Egypt Air 777 a couple months ago where a baby was born on board just a few minutes before she landed. I tried to locate the parents to give them a pic of the plane, but couldn't find them.

Art