Flight forced to turn around after mother forgets her baby at the airport

A Malaysia-bound plane had to turn back to Saudi Arabia after a passenger realised she had left her baby at the airport.

As reported by Gulf News, the pilot, en route to Kuala Lumpur, requested a return to the airport, radioing air traffic controllers to plead for permission to fly back the way they came.

“May God be with us,” the pilot was heard saying on the traffic controller’s radio.

“Can we come back or what? This flight is requesting to come back, a passenger forgot her baby in the waiting area, the poor thing.”

Eventually the air traffic personnel had no choice but to allow the pilot to return. “Okay, head back to the gate,” they responded. “This is a totally new one for us!”

The pilot successfully turned the plane around and the flight returned to the airport where the mother was presumably reunited with the child she somehow forgot was with her.

It is rare for planes to turn around or divert midair for anything other than technical or passenger health reasons, according to global media reports.

In 2013, an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to New York diverted to Kansas City because of a “very unruly passenger” who refused to stop singing Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You.

In New York the following year, a taxiing plane heading to Seoul returned to the gate after the South Korean airline heiress Cho Hyun-ah forced a senior crew member to disembark because she had been served macadamia nuts from a packet instead of a bowl.