A plane headed towards Malaysia reportedly had to make an abrupt turnaround after a passenger aboard the aircraft realized that she forgot her baby at the terminal.
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“This flight is requesting to come back…a passenger forgot her baby in the waiting area, the poor thing,” a pilot could be heard saying in a recording obtained by Gulf News. “We told you, a passenger left her baby in the terminal and refuses to continue the flight.”
The Saudia Airlines flight was eventually able to turn around. The video of the pilot requesting to go back has gone viral since the incident on Saturday, with people asking how one could possibly forget their child? But this mom is not the first.
Over the last few years, we’ve heard of parents forgetting children in cars. In a 2016 op-ed for CNN, psychologist David Diamond hypothesized that the brain’s memory centers are at work when parents forget children. High-stress situations that are out of parents’ normal routine can contribute to the forgetfulness.
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“Although each case is different, the cases tend to share factors in common that contribute to children being left in cars: a change in the parent’s routine that leads him or her to follow an alternate, but well-traveled, route; a change in how the parent interacted with the child during the drive, such as when a child might have fallen asleep en route; and a lack of a cue, such as a sound or an object associated with the child — for example, a diaper bag in plain view,” Diamond wrote.
Thankfully, in this case, the mom was able to return to the departure lounge and be reunited with her baby.