Woman gives birth on plane

MANILA, Philippines - An overseas Filipino worker returning home from Jeddah gave birth to a baby girl as she was on a Saudi Airlines flight before dawn yesterday.

Salima Juddaiman said she will name her daughter Victoria, not Saudia as suggested by some medical personnel who attended to her shortly after she was taken from the plane, which touched down at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport at past noon yesterday.

Juddaiman gave birth while the plane was flying in India’s air space at around 3 a.m. Philippine time.

She said she and her husband spent the past four years working in Saudi Arabia. She returned to the country to give birth while her husband remains in Jeddah. She said she thought she was not due until next month.

At the NAIA clinic, attending physician Maria Theresa Azores said Victoria, who weighed three kilos at birth, is a full-term infant.

“The baby is nine months old. She would not have weighed as much had she been born premature,” Azores said, adding that Juddaiman may have made a mistake in counting the months of her pregnancy.

Juddaiman said she was 27 years old, but her passport indicates she was born in 1983, making her a 30-year-old mother of two.

Giving birth in airplanes is now a common occurrence as pregnant women can hide their bellies by wearing several layers of clothing, according to Leoncio Nakpil II, chairman of the Airline Operators Council .

Airlines do not allow pregnant women who are nearly due to give birth to be taken aboard, he said, adding that it is not true that people born in airplanes are entitled to free tickets for life from the airlines.