Woman gives birth mid-flight. Passengers hardly notice.

What’s the worst kind of passenger you can sit next to on a plane?

Someone who takes up too much room? A crying baby? Uncontrollable body functions?

Combine them, add some placenta, and THAT is what happened on a flight yesterday.

A Southwest Airlines flight from San Francisco to Phoenix had to be diverted to Los Angeles after a woman squeezed out a baby boy just after take-off. That’s right, the baby arrived before the plane did.

Fortunately, a doctor and a nurse happen to be on the flight. It’s a shame there wasn’t a maternity ward there too, but things turned out okay for the baby and the mother, who were rushed to hospital from the emergency landing and are doing well.

A passenger spoke to news station KTVK. “All of a sudden I heard a baby cry like a gurgling sound, like a baby that had too much milk or whatever and I’m like: ‘There’s no babies on this flight’.”

“The captain announced congratulations for the arrival of this new baby boy.”

“So we all started applauding, but it was confusing because we thought someone was going to die not be born.” (Bit pessimistic, dude).

All accounts of the flight-birth describe the incident as very calm, even “weirdly calm”. We can’t help but wonder how the person sitting next to the incident felt, though. Help out? Press call button and ask for some forceps? Or quietly shuffle the newspaper and pretend nothing is happening?

Congratulations, air-mum. Apparently you made it look easy.

The airline cleaners may not have been so thrilled, though.