What nationality are babies born on flights?
In April, Turkish Airlines flight attendants helped deliver a premature baby at 42,000 feet.
The girl, Kadiju, was born mid-flight after her mother, Nafi Diaby, unexpectedly went into labour while travelling from Conakry in Guinea to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso.
But it was Kadiju's nationality and place of birth that became a talking point, given she would be entitled to her mother's nationality by descent, though she may have been born in another country's airspace.
Kadiju isn't the first baby to be born on an international flight.
In 1991, Shona Kirsty Yves (whose initials spell Sky), couldn't wait until her mother, travelling from Ghana, landed in the UK. The baby's place of birth was recorded as "on an airplane 10 miles south of Mayfield, Sussex".
"I willed the plane to hurry," mum Deborah Owen told The Guardian in 2014.
"I knew I couldn't hold on much longer. We flew over Madrid and the captain explained that, if we reached Paris, we wouldn't stop but would make a dash for London.
"Soon the urge to push became unbearable. When the captain at last told me we had passed Paris, I knew the baby wouldn't wait any more.
According to an immigration caseworker, there are many factors to be considered when a child is born mid-flight.
"Firstly, if the flight is from a country signed to the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness agreement, then the child will be a national of where the airplane is registered," Vaibhav Tanwar told The Telegraph.
"If the country is not part of the agreement, then the location of the airplane within international airspace will be the child's nationality."
This would mean that if a child was born within US airspace, they would become an American national, for example. However, some countries do not allow children born there to become a citizen, meaning the child would adopt the nationality of either the mother or father.
"The same rules apply to babies born on cruise ships. Births tend to be more common at sea, due to the duration of journey," Tanwar said.
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Hero image credit: Turkish Airlines / Twitter
First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.