Thai pilot Jakarin Sararnrakskul has become a sort of national hero after helping deliver a baby after one of his passengers went into labour mid-flight.
The VierJet pilot was informed that a woman went to the bathroom and went into labour on 23 February. The flight, operated on an Airbus A320 registered HS-VKC, was going from Taipei, Taiwan, to Bangkok, Thailand.
Once he heard about the emergency, he promptly trusted the control of the aircraft to his co-pilot and went to assist the passenger. Soon after reaching the mom-to-be, the baby was born. Although Sararnrakskul has 18 years of experience as a pilot, he has no medical training, but he proudly shared the events on his social media accounts.
He will be able to tell everyone for the rest of his life that he was born in the air.
Jakarin Sararnrakskul
“I have been a pilot for 18 years. I just helped a newborn baby on the plane. I feel so proud that I could help to bring him into the world”, Sararnrakskul wrote on social media.
A medical crew waited in Bangkok to check the mother and the child. They were both found safe and healthy and the cabin crew nicknamed the newborn “Sky Baby”. Whether or not the mother already had a name chosen or not has not been revealed.
It’s rare that babies are born on planes due to rules about pregnant women flying in their third trimester. According to a 2020 study, published by the International Society of Travel Medicine, 74 children were born on commercial flights between 1929 and 2018, of which all but three survived.
The rules on flying while pregnant are hard to navigate because of huge variety from carrier to carrier, with some requiring a doctor’s certificate to fly after a certain number of weeks’ pregnancy, and others applying different conditions. It’s unsurprising therefore that the overall result is to discourage women near the point of labour from flying.
