SalemNews.com, Salem, MA
News
Couple witness something special in the air
Published: January 8, 2009
DANVERS — The first half of Northwest Airlines Flight 59 from Amsterdam to Boston was a passenger's nightmare for a Danvers couple as they sat in front of a mother who could not keep her toddler quiet.
Those concerns paled in comparison with what happened when the mother went into labor and gave birth to a baby girl before the plane touched down in Boston.
The "bizarre little event" became a New Year's Eve miracle for Susan Macdonald and her husband, Phil Jones.
They took turns holding up blankets to give the Ugandan woman privacy as two doctors on board delivered the baby 36,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean.
The plane landed at Logan International Airport without having to be diverted to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Macdonald noted the Boeing 757 landed amid fresh snow that morning.
"You couldn't have scripted it," Macdonald said.
Both Jones and Macdonald are biological scientists, and Macdonald has some medical training, as she works in drug discovery for Archimex in Cambridge. That medical training was unnecessary, Macdonald said, as two doctors, including one identified in reports as Dr. Paresh Thakkar of Andover, delivered the 6-pound girl.
The Danvers scientists were flying back through Amsterdam after spending a week in England visiting Jones' family.
As the couple waited in security in Amsterdam, they noticed a pregnant woman, whose identity has not been released, and saw she was traveling with a toddler.
To their chagrin, the woman and her toddler sat behind them, the woman seated in the window seat directly behind Macdonald. A traveling companion of the pregnant woman sat a few rows ahead.
Then, Macdonald's fears came true.
"She was making no attempt to keep the child quiet," said Macdonald, who found it odd the woman kept rocking back and forth. Macdonald had no way of knowing how far along the woman was.
"It wouldn't have crossed your mind she was going into labor, and she didn't alert anyone."
Safe landing
The woman wound up kneeling on the floor and banging her head on the back of Macdonald's seat. Finally, a passenger in an aisle seat adjacent to the woman alerted the flight crew, and they put out a call for doctors.
Macdonald became fearful when the woman's traveling companion came back and said the woman was six months pregnant, and there was an hour and a half left in the flight. Macdonald was concerned the plane would be diverted and feared for the woman delivering so prematurely in a plane.
The doctors went to work, and Macdonald marveled at the "pretty decent" medical kit on board.
"Our job was to help hold the blankets for her privacy," Macdonald said, "and I was pretty impressed with people's concern for her privacy."
The baby was born quickly, its airway cleared, and it let out a small cry. One of the doctors gave the baby an Apgar score of 8 as a measure of its health on a scale of zero to 10. Doctors said it appeared to be full-term.
It wasn't until the baby was stabilized that the crew announced the birth, "and everyone clapped."
The mother appeared disoriented from the experience, and flight attendants held the baby before the plane landed. With lots of kids on board, parents offered formula for the baby.
Macdonald could see the lights of emergency crews in the distance as the plane taxied to the gate. Customs and crews came on board, and the woman and newborn were taken to Massachusetts General Hospital.
Reports the baby was named Sasha may have mixed up that name with that of the toddler traveling with the woman, Macdonald said.
A medical team met the flight at the gate, said Phil Orlandella, a Massport spokesman, after it was learned at 9:30 a.m. that an inbound flight would be landing with a woman who had delivered a baby girl over Canadian airspace.
Orlandella said he had no further information about the mother or the baby.
"The crew reported everything was fine," Orlandella said.
Macdonald, who is in her 40s, said she flies this route fairly often, "and it's never quite that eventful."
