Navigator Volunteered To Be A Midwife

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30401, 28 March 1964, Page 2

Navigator Volunteered To Be A Midwife

(N-Z. Frets Association—Copariaht)

SYDNEY, March 27. An airliner’s crew drew lots to see who would deliver a passenger’s baby as the plane raced the stork across the Austral-' ian outback yesterday. The plane, a Qantas Boeing 707 jet from Singapore, won the race into Sydney airport after a 1000-mile dash in two hours. The passenger, Mrs Margo Simington, aged 22, gave birth to a 61b 7oz son, her first child, two hours later. Both were “doing fine,” a hospital spokesman said.

Mrs Simington is the wife of an official, at the Australian Embassy in Djakarta. ' The drama began when the jet, with 68 passengers aboard, was at 35,000 feet between Alice Springs in central Australia and Parkes, in western New South Wales. Mrs Simington, eight and a half months pregnant, approached the Swiss-born hostess, Miss Marjorie.de Montet, and said: “I think I'm going to have .my baby.” The jet’s pilot, Captain A. S. Robertson, of Sydney, said

no-one among the crew was qualified to assist in a birth, “So I decided to hold a ballpt to choose a ‘voluntary’ midwife from the flight crew.” “Our flight navigator won the ballot and reluctantly volunteered.”

Mrs Simington was taken to the forward crew rest, area, where the navigator, Mr George Berry, assisted by Miss de Montet, gave her whiffs of oxygen. Captain Robertson alerted Sydney airport by radio. Qantas nursing sisters took over after the plane landed, and a hydraulic lift cateringtruck was used to lower Mrs Simington from the jet to an ambulance which rushed her to hospital.