Manama: A woman has delivered a premature baby girl on a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight to New York.
Flight SV21 was en route to New York JFK Airport from the Red Sea city of Jeddah when the woman, who was not named, went into labour.
The pilots declared an emergency.
According to British media, the plane was flying over Northern Ireland and the flight was diverted to Heathrow Airport in London. The pilots were instructed to dump fuel before landing the Boeing 777.
A picture of the airline staff happily holding the new-born baby inside the cabin emerged on social media.
A Saudi Arabian Airlines public officer confirmed the mid-flight birth, saying that “a happy event forced the Jeddah-New York plane to land in London”.
Abdul Rahman Al Fahad said that the passenger was in her seventh month and had a report that allowed her to board the plane.
“Both the mother and the baby girl are doing fine,” Al Fahad said, quoted by Saudi daily Okaz on Thursday.
He added that the airline crew were trained for such emergency cases.
