A woman gave birth to a baby girl on a flight from southwest China's Sichuan Province to Wuhan with the help of some young female crew members who were trained to handle in-flight childbirth, China Eastern Airlines said yesterday.
Feng Yu, who was near the end of her term, felt the first contractions around 9am when on China Eastern's flight MU2652 bound for Wuhan, Hubei Province, from Chengdu.
The 23-year-old gave birth to a 3-kilogram baby in the air with the help of four attendants, Wang Ru, a press officer with the Shanghai-based airline's Wuhan branch, said yesterday.
"I was frightened when the baby's head came out but the body was still stuck. ... I asked myself to calm down and firmly held the woman's hand and tried hard to recall what I had learned from emergency training," said Zuo Lei, the purser of the flight who helped the delivery.
Feng's water had broken when her aunt called for help at 9:30am, 50 minutes into the two-hour flight, Zuo said.
After failing to find a medical worker among the passengers, the attendants vacated the last two rows of seats on the Boeing 737 and used pillows and blankets to set up a makeshift delivery room while preparing hot water, towels and first aid boxes, Zuo said.