Sometimes there's nothing worse than a baby on board an airplane - especially if it's a long flight. Their tiny eardrums can't take the pressure of the air cabin flying thousands of feet in the air and they start screaming and screaming. Or they're wriggling around kicking you and the back of your seat. Or they try and eat your food. And the parents are usually too sleep exhausted to do much about it apart from look at you hopelessly.
It's mostly the screaming that gets to me. How do they reach that high pitched note?
But one baby on board the Turkish Airlines flight was a bit of a miracle. Baby Kadiju was born mid-flight.
Nafi Diaby gave birth to a baby girl at 42,000ft while flying from Conakry, Guinea, to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. The cabin crew sprang into action and helped Nafi give birth - I imagine that wasn't part of their training.
Credit: Turkish Airlines/SWNS
Giving birth to a baby looks like it would be pretty difficult at the best of times, but I can't even imagine how you would give birth on a plane. Would you have to do it in your seat? You would hope that being in labour would allow you to go up into first class - having said that, I've been on business class on Turkish Airlines and it isn't roomy.
The plane was a Boeing 737-900 but it was also pretty tiny.
Giving birth on a plane would give you no privacy at all. And it would be pretty awkward for all the other passengers to witness that. Not to mention messy.
And there's so much that can go wrong with labour. You really do need to give birth in hospital where there are trained medical professionals and equipment to deal with it. What do they have on a plane apart from a first aid kit? Lot's of packets of nuts and blankets?
But amazingly, the baby and mother are doing fine.
Perhaps this is why Turkish Airlines has been voted the best European airline for six years in a row. Impeccable service. Not even a woman in labour can faze them.
"Welcome on board Princess! Applause goes to our cabin crew!" the Turkish Airlines team wrote on their social media.
Credit: Turkish Airlines/SWNS
There are two questions I want answered. How did Nafi get on a plane when she clearly due to pop? It's really dangerous to fly when you're over four or five months pregnant and that baby does not look premature. And secondly, what do you put on the birth certificate for where baby Kadiju was born?
I'm also pretty disappointed the baby wasn't named Jet. That would have been a great name for a baby born on a plane. I suppose that Kadiju is OK, too.
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Words: Laura Hamilton
Featured Image Credit: Turkish Airlines/SWNS