Expert: Airlines can be fooled by pregnant women

MADRID (AP) — If a woman really wants to get around the rules barring her from flying in late pregnancy, there's little an airline can do to stop her.

Investigators believe that a Filipino maid who gave birth in an airplane toilet two weeks ago deliberately wore baggy clothes and some sort of girdle around her stomach to conceal her pregnancy, Gulf Air spokeswoman Katherine Kaczynska said today.

It's not clear how far along the Filipino woman was in her pregnancy when she boarded the 10-hour Gulf Air flight from Bahrain to Manila, the spokeswoman said.

The airline has procedures to identify pregnant women checking in for flights, "but if someone conceals the pregnancy, it's difficult and nigh on impossible for us to tell," Kaczynska said.

While the vast majority of women heed airline rules against flying during the last four or five weeks of pregnancy or comply with requirements about providing a medical certificate from a doctor, some manage to conceal their condition or lie about how far along they are so they can get where they want to go.