Woman gives birth to premature baby on Singapore Airlines plane

SINGAPORE: A pregnant woman reportedly gave birth to a premature baby on board a Singapore Airlines (SIA) flight, according to fellow passengers who shared the tale on social media.

The woman was reportedly just seven months pregnant when she took an SIA flight from Dubai to Singapore on Monday (3 April) and ended up giving birth to her child prematurely, during the flight.

Netizens posted on Facebook that the situation forced the flight to change its course and divert to Penang to land, delaying the arrival of the flight in Singapore by more than an hour and a half. One netizen wrote online:

“A SQ pax just give birth on SQ495 (DXB-SIN) departing 3/Apr. aircraft is 9V-SHQ. Baby was born pre-mature (7 months). Plane was diverted to Penang due to this and arrived in SIN 90 mins later than scheduled arrival time.”

The netizen added, “Guess no lifetime free flights for the baby? Wonder SQ will bill the pax for the cost…”

Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 confirms this account. Data on the website shows that SIA’s SQ495 flight took off at 7:50pm on Monday and was originally scheduled to arrive in Singapore at 7:30am on Tuesday.

However, the website shows that after the flight was diverted, it arrived in Penang at 6:00 am on Tuesday morning, then departed from Penang and arrived in Singapore at 9:06 am. The flight was indeed delayed by more than one and a half hours, due to the diversion.