The insurance firm of China Airlines, which made an emergency landing in Alaska en route from Taipei to Los Angeles on October 8, will decide whether to ask the passenger to cover costs of the stopover to ensure the health of her baby, the airline’s media affairs official Weni Lee said on Friday.
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The amount the woman could be fined, is the cost of diverting the plane.
Aside from doing editing, she also occasionally wrote feature stories and covered local news for the paper.
(This couldn’t be verified according to The AP.) A passenger told Inside Edition, however, that when she told customs about what happened on the plane, she was informed that women coming to America from other countries to give birth is not uncommon. “But when I saw her she was, like, very pregnant”.
Two weeks ago, a heroic doctor delivered a baby while 30,000 feet in the air, on a flight from Taiwan to Los Angeles.
The woman, whose identity has been kept confidential, was sent back Saturday from Alaska to Taiwan without the baby, but American authorities have not given a reason. According to Chen, the mother failed to inform the crew that she was 36 weeks pregnant – a full month past the 32 week limit that Taiwan aviation regulations consider safe for expectant mothers to fly.
The China Airlines flight was travelling from Bali to LA when the woman, only known by her surname Jian, went into labour. Once her water broke she refused to lie down and repeatedly asked when they were close to the U.S.
At a legislature meeting on Monday, several MPs pressed Transport Minister Chen Jianyi on the matter – as the Taiwan government is the majority shareholder of China Airlines, lawmakers demanded to know if taxpayers’ money had been “wasted” on diverting the plane.
A family friend then assumed custody of the baby, the Daily Mail reported.
Sociologist Pei-chia Lan told the BBC the uproar has tapped into a deeper resentment over the trend of “birth tourism” among affluent Taiwanese, as well as an upsurge in nationalism. Susan Morgan, spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Social Services, explained that if baby is eligible for the U.S. citizenship if flight is the first place where the child has arrived, even when born in worldwide air space. “We need a doctor”, she said.
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Coming back to Taiwan after more than 20 years, Chen said she has witnessed how Taiwan has evolved into a mature, energetic democracy over the past decades.
