Every time I watch Home Alone, I imagine myself in Mrs. McCallister's shoes: What if I accidentally left my kid home in the chaos of the morning, raced to the airport, and didn't realize he was missing until I was 10,000 feet above the clouds? Well, a mom flying from Saudi Arabia faced a (slightly) similar situation this week when she accidentally left her baby at the airport terminal and didn't realize her mistake until after take-off.
The mom immediately alerted the cabin crew, who then made a decision that's usually reserved for cases of emergency: They turned back.
The flight had recently taken off from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and was bound for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. But once the mom frantically told crew members that her baby had been left behind, the pilot sprang into action.
In fact, a now-viral video shot aboard Flight SV832 shows the pilot requesting permission to head back to the airport from air traffic controllers on the ground, who were taken by surprise (to say the least) and unsure of protocol.
“May God be with us," the pilot can reportedly be heard saying in the video. "Can we come back or what?”
“This flight is requesting to come back," the operator then says to a fellow ATC "a passenger forgot her baby in the waiting area, the poor thing.”
According to the pilot, the mother had apparently left her baby in the boarding area of the terminal at King Abdul Aziz International Airport and "refuses to continue the flight."
“Okay, head back to the gate," the operator responds. "This is totally a new one for us!”
It certainly is.
As the video continues to go viral, so do the comments swirling on social media about how it all went down.
There have been plenty of "Wait … her BABY? How?" comments and classic Kevin McCallister memes floating around.
Meanwhile, others questioned what state of mind you have to be in for this to happen.
"How does a mother forget her baby?" wrote one user, before (perhaps comically) reasoning: "I can understand after years of marriage with stress that you can forget your husband or wife … "
According to Newsweek, several of the passengers took to social media as well, though their reactions varied from praising the pilot's actions to criticizing the mother's carelessness.
Although incidents such as this one are extremely rare, they're not unheard of.
In fact, just last year, a German couple left their 5-year-old daughter behind in an airport after returning from a holiday trip. According to Fox News, the mother later told police that she and her husband had driven home in separate cars, and each believed the child to be with the other.
Luckily, the 5-year-old, as well as the baby at the center of this latest incident, were both found and returned to their parents safely. But both stories serve as a reminder to parents everywhere that keeping a close watch on kids — especially at busy airport terminals and during travel — is imperative, and that it sometimes pays to be hypervigilent.
