A passenger on a Southwest Airlines 737 gave birth in flight on Wednesday morning, shortly after takeoff from San Francisco. A doctor and nurse on board assisted, and the captain diverted the flight, which was bound for Phoenix, to land in Los Angeles. “It was a beautiful day, smooth, everything was going great,” said Captain John Gordy. “ATC was great, we told them we were declaring an emergency and what the problem was, it was like Moses parting the waters, they got all the traffic out of the way,” he said. “I can’t think of anything else that’s going to top that, at least not for a while.”
“It was amazing. All the passengers were awesome,” said flight attendant Carri Robinson. “Everybody was clapping.” The mother and child were taken to a local hospital where they were “doing fine,” according to an LAX spokesman. The rest of the passengers, after a two-hour delay, were boarded on another aircraft to continue their trip to Phoenix.
