What Happens to Babies Born on Planes

16.01.2024 - 18:01 / cntraveler.com / London Gatwick

Debbie Owen assumed that the British Airways flight from the Ivory Coast to London Gatwick would be straightforward: seven hours non-stop, swapping the heat of Africa for the cozy pre-holiday glow of Britain. At seven months pregnant, Owen was traveling solo back to the UK with her four-year old daughter, Claire, in tow; husband Duncan was still at home in Africa, and would follow closer to the birth. But it wasn’t long after take-off that the twinges started, which soon turned into contractions. Owen knew her baby wasn’t due until Christmas, seven weeks later: She’d even visited her doctor for a check-up before the flight, and had a letter deeming her safe to travel. Still, it was clear that her second child was planning an early arrival.

Debbie fought the contractions at first, hoping to reach a hospital, but it soon became clear that her baby would touch down before the plane did. The crew took care of Claire, while a Dutch doctor, Wym Bakker, en route home from providing maternity care in Ghana, took charge of the birth. The flight was just off the coast of the UK when the baby was born; she would be called Shona Kirsty Yves, or SKY. Duncan didn’t receive the news from his wife, though: “The pilot phoned my father himself to say, ‘This is the BA pilot, and your wife is going into labor,'” says Shona, now in her thirties.

Shona is one of an estimated 70 people worldwide known as skyborns—impromptu deliveries who increase the passenger manifest mid-flight. When tasked with creating a digital journalism project as a student, Shona created a website and community for skyborns, and researched the history of births like hers. There have been a few stories in recent years: Matthew Dulles de Bara made headlines not long after Shona’s arrival, when his mother gave birth mid-air between New York and Orlando; another bonus passenger emerged in 2015, a little girl who joined a plane mid-flight between Taipei and Los Angeles. Virgin Atlantic’s first birth at 36,000 feet came in 2004. The baby was named Virginia, and Branson’s firm named a plane in her honor. Eight years later, on a flight to Johannesburg, another Virgin baby arrived—this time, a boy. Most recently, a mother gave birth on a 12-hour overnight Emirates flight from Tokyo Narita to Dubai International on January 19, 2023.

Shona was particularly delighted, though, to unearth the story of the first such baby; she found it in an obscure clipping from a Florida newspaper dating back to 1929. “The father was an airplane enthusiast, and a doctor whose wife was heavily pregnant, so when [the wife] felt she was about to give birth they got into his plane and kept circling at 2,000 feet until she did,” says Shona. “They called her Airleen.” Shona also found