Reports have emerged from several news outlets that a young mother traveling with her baby from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, accidentally left her baby at the airport terminal, realizing only once she was inside the plane, with the doors closed, after the flight was airborne.
A clip of the Saudi Arabian Airlines pilot speaking to control tower officials at King Abdulaziz airport has been circulating online, where he can be heard asking for permission to return.
Initially reported in Gulf News, the Dubai-based paper writes that the pilot asked ground control to do a turn-around back to the gate to get the baby.
“May God be with us. Can we come back or what?” the pilot is heard asking in the video.
A surprised colleague then asks: “This flight is requesting to come back…a passenger forgot her baby in the waiting area, the poor thing.”
He adds: “OK, head back to the gate. This is totally a new one for us!”
Mother and child were safely reunited, and the flight carried on without incident.
While you may be sitting there, wondering how one forgets a baby, we’ll remind you that there have been plenty of high-profile stories of people forgetting their kids — like that time that former British Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife left their eight-year-old daughter at a pub, only realizing that neither had taken her home, as they had left in separate cars.
Much like the mother in today’s news, child and parent were reunited safely.
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