Airlines Can Be Fooled By Pregnant Women Anytime

Nurses attend to a newborn baby found inside the lavatory of an airplane

This debate about how airlines can often be fooled by women who want to fly in their late pregnancy stages, started two weeks ago, when a Filipino maid gave birth to a child in an airplane toilet.

According to the investigators belief and the Gulf Air’s spokeswoman, Katherine Kaczynska, statement, the woman deliberately wore some sort of girdle around her stomach and baggy clothes to conceal her pregnancy; and even if the pregnancy of the women was discovered, there’s little an airline could’ve done to stop her from getting on the plane, not to mention the fact that it is nearly impossible to identify a pregnant woman with the current airline procedures.

Some things related to this case are still not clear enough, for example, when the Filipino woman boarded the 10-hour Gulf Air flight from Bahrain to Manila how along was in her pregnancy. The case is not singular, even if the regular requirements are not to fly during the last four or five weeks of pregnancy, to provide a medical certificate from a doctor, or specify about how far along they are so they can get where they want to go.

Flight attendant Sara Nelson, who works for United Airlines, also being the spokeswoman for the United Airlines branch of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, is one of those women who flew while being eight months pregnant, a gesture which got reactions everywhere, including some raised eyebrows. “I probably scared people a little bit”, she said, but her flight was all legal even if she looked like she was ready to give birth at any moment.

Airlines often report medical cases such as heart attacks and anxiety attacks or identify travelers who passed out after taking tranquilizers or drinking alcohol, so from this statement you can clearly understand that in-flights are so infrequent that they aren’t even tracked by airline associations. The case of the Filipino woman, who was raped and impregnated by her employer in Qatar before being forced by her employer’s wife to return home, clearly is one of the few ones noticed by airlines in these last years. As she managed to board on the plane, her labor began so she had to give birth in the packed jet’s toilet without any other passengers or the flight crew noticing; she then abandoned her nine-ounce (three-kilogram), six-pound, baby boy in the trash, fearing her family accusations.

Several investigations are still on-going, the bloodstains found on the seat being currently tests for DNA to make absolutely sure the baby was born on the flight and the woman is the mother; depending on the result, the woman could face prison, being charged or not of child abandonment.

Another case which made it in the headlines is that of a Samoan woman, who, during a flight to New Zealand, gave birth without being noticed; she afterwards abandoned here child in the trash, but fortunately it was saved in time and survived, while his mother was convicted of abandonment and deported.

Babies have also been born, since 2007, on a domestic flight in Malaysia; aboard planes flying from Chicago to Salt Lake City; and on long-haul flights from Hong Kong to Australia, from the Netherlands to Boston, and from Germany to Atlanta; the gate attendants were easily fooled by the pregnant women, some who stated that they have reached the airline’s cutoff date.

According to Dr. Fanancy Anzalone, president-elect of the Aerospace Medical Association in Alexandria, Virginia, if the women show no sign of physical distress they can easily fool the attendants, because the simple truth is that “The rules now are based on honesty and (the idea) that a pregnant mom is going to protect her unborn”.

The attendants are the ones responsible in detecting the stage of pregnancy by identifying the possible signs of labor or distress, but if they are not sure about their decision, it is better to call the medical personnel to determine whether she has the necessary medical documentation and is fit to fly in her current condition.

The editor for the U.S.-based Inside Flier magazine, Randy Peterson, stated that the busy gate attendants face a diplomatic nightmare when they ask a woman about her pregnancy, just because all women show the condition differently and some of them aren’t even pregnant even if they look like it. Adopting new airline rules may prove rather difficult because if a passenger doesn’t want to specify its medical condition you can not possibly oblige them to do as you please, and “Ultimately, you are legislating the unlegislatable”, since “It is an honor system, and if a lady is willing to take a risk — and a lot of things can go wrong — that’s their liability, not an airline liability”.

The risk taken may threaten the life of the child but also that of the mother, since the international flights can be hours from an airport and there is no guarantee of adequate medical care on a plane because no flights have the sophisticated medical equipment needed for labor emergencies, even if nurses, doctors or are frequently aboard as passengers, while the flight attendants have onboard medical kits and can use satellite phones to ask for professional help.

Jeffrey Sventek, the Aerospace Medical Association’s executive director, stated that the airplane doesn’t offer a clear environment to deliver a child.

The case of the Filipino woman who succeeded in given birth quietly in a plane toilet still remains a mystery since the flight crews always pay extra attention to their passengers and usually note the places where pregnant women are sitting, sharing this information afterwards to the rest of the crew, as Capt. Tom Walsh, a pilot who flies international routes, pointed out. He also said that even if the pregnancy can be easily hidden, when the pregnant women are discovered, the entire crew “will keep an eye on them, they will let us know and usually it’s not a problem”.

There is a flight policy to always knock on the door of the plane’s toilet when someone stays in the bathroom a long time, but even so, the flight attendants can’t guess what’s really going on in there because “they get busy, and it’s not unusual for people to stay a long time in there”, and even the later statements of the flight attendants and passengers in the case of the pregnant Filipino woman, weren’t describing anything unusual about that particular flight, as Kaczynska of Gulf Air said.

Philip Baum, editor of the London-based Aviation Security International magazine, declared that airlines don’t even take in consideration the idea of installing cameras inside the bathrooms since the “restrooms on board aircraft are obviously a private area and should remain that”; the only solution would be for governments or airlines to pay extra attention and analyze the passengers behavior to better identify people who may have psychological problems, even if currently, the security officials closely scrutinize passengers in airports to prevent terrorism threats. Baum also stated that he is more concerned about the disruptive passenger, the one who is drunk or has a psychological problem, since these types of people cause problems on airlines every day, so basically “We are talking about … looking for people that are somewhat unhinged”.