A mom on a Saudia Airlines flight accidentally forgot her baby at the airport, forcing the pilot to turn the whole plane around.
Many moms have a hilariously forgetful moment in their past. Maybe they forgot to pick up their kid at school one day! Or maybe they left a toddler wandering around the grocery store for 10 whole minutes!
But this mom. According to Newsweek, this mom left her baby in the boarding area of an airport. She got on the plane, sat through takeoff, and only then realized that her baby was missing.
Thankfully, the pilot was able to make arrangements to turn the plane around.
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"May God be with us. Can we come back or what?" the pilot asked air traffic control in a now-viral video. "This flight is requesting to come back… a passenger forgot her baby in the waiting area, the poor thing."
This is like Home Alone, but with a way shorter plot.
Traveling with kids is hard. It's hectic and stressful and exhausting, so moms and other caregivers are bound to make mistakes and forget things once in a while.
Forgetting your whole entire child in an airport, though? This is a whole new level of forgetfulness.
Last weekend, a mom was on a Saudia Airlines flight on the way from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. After the plane had taken off, she frantically informed the crew that she had forgotten her baby in the boarding area at King Abdulaziz International Airport.
A YouTube video captured the air control operator's conversation with the Saudia pilot, and the video has gone viral. It has over 1.8 million views at the time of writing.
"May God be with us. Can we come back or what?" the pilot asks in the clip.
"This flight is requesting to come back… a passenger forgot her baby in the waiting area, the poor thing," the pilot continued.
The air traffic staff asked for the pilot to confirm the story. They probably couldn't believe their ears.
"We told you, a passenger left her baby in the terminal and refuses to continue the flight," the pilot confirmed.
The operator finally agreed.
"OK, head back to the gate," he said. "This is a totally new one for us!"
With the return trip approved, the plane successfully turned around and landed right back at King Abdulaziz International Airport — probably to the annoyance of many passengers on board.
The details of how and why this mom forgot her baby have not been revealed, leaving people to fill in the blanks of this pretty baffling story. Was the mom extremely sleep-deprived? Did she think her husband had the baby? Did she have older kids to worry about and accidentally forgot the youngest?
Luckily, the mom and baby were reunited at the airport after the plane returned, and everyone made it home safely. Phew.
People on social media are having a mixed bag of reactions to the story. Some can't fathom how a mom could EVER forget her baby.
But every family has a story about that time Mom forgot someone at the grocery store, or the mall, or the bank. It happens! It's called "mom brain" for a reason.
Still — an airport?! As one Twitter user pointed out, planes rarely take off immediately. Imagine sitting there, waiting and waiting for takeoff, and not noticing that your baby is missing! (Also, did nobody in the airport notice an extra unattended baby?)
Then again, there was a whole movie made about basically this exact situation: Home Alone. That kid didn't even make it TO the airport.
Some people are calling out the mother as neglectful and careless. Others are more sympathetic, acknowledging that staying on top of all your mom duties all the time is really hard. (Which is why some people just opt out.)
In any case, thank goodness the baby is OK! Someday, that child will be telling the best story since Kevin McCallister.
