A pilot from Taiwan is being hailed a hero after helping a passenger deliver her baby in the middle of an international flight on February 23.
Jakarin Sararnrakskul was piloting the VietJet plane from Taipei, Taiwan, to Bangkok, Thailand, when the crew told him that a woman on the plane was having a medical emergency in the bathroom. Leaving the controls to his co-pilot, Sararnrakskul left the cockpit to attend to the woman. He realized she was in labor and ended up helping her deliver her baby.
He said that though he has been a pilot for 18 years, delivering a baby was a first. He noted that the infant, a boy, was nicknamed “Sky” by the flight crew.
Sararnrakskul posted a picture of himself holding the infant on his Instagram page. “I’ve been an airport pilot for 18 years. I just got to help a newborn on a plane today!!!!” he wrote.
“He will be able to tell everyone for the rest of his life that he was born in the air,” he said of the newborn baby boy. “I feel so proud that I could help to bring him into the world.”
Paramedics were waiting to tend to the mother and baby upon the plane’s landing, and both are said to be healthy.
READ: Premature baby born on flight from London to India brings passengers together
Though births on flights are rare, they aren’t unheard of. In 2022, a woman gave birth to a baby on a flight from Ecuador to the Netherlands, after she reportedly didn’t know she was pregnant. In a remarkable story from 2023, a 17-year-old who was seven months pregnant gave birth to a premature baby on a flight from Nicaragua to Miami. Though the baby was born breech and wasn’t breathing for several minutes after birth, she survived thanks to the quick thinking of several doctors on board. Still, aviation medical support firm MedAire says that these births are unusual, and occur approximately one in every 26 million passengers, according to Conde Nast Traveler.
