Best friends and paramedics Tina Fritz and Kaarin Powell will never forget the momentous five-hour flight from Atlanta to Portland when they joined a short list in history of medical professionals who’ve delivered a baby in flight:
Clearing out the seats next to the laboring mom — to give them space to work and the mom some modicum of privacy on the packed flight.
Using one of their own shoelaces to tie around the birthing mother’s arm to start an IV.
Asking a passenger to donate her fuzzy lap blanket to wipe off the baby after birth.
And a flight attendant offering a butter knife to cut the umbilical cord, though Fritz and Powell later found a pair of scissors to do the job.
“It was one you would just spread peanut butter with,” Powell said of the butter knife. “I said ‘No, that’s not going to work.’”
The pair recounted the harrowing moments that led to their first-ever in-flight delivery on Delta Flight 478 last Friday night. Because of federal privacy laws, Fritz and Powell normally wouldn’t be able to speak publicly if they had been on the job. But because they delivered the baby on their own time, they shared their story with The Oregonian/OregonLive Tuesday. They also say they got the permission of the new mom first.
Ashley Blair gave birth to a healthy 5-pound, 8-ounce girl just before the wheels hit the ground, likely somewhere over Troutdale or Northeast Portland. Fritz and Powell, who have been in contact with Blair in the days since, say all three of them have been overwhelmed with interview requests from media across the country. Meanwhile, Blair is getting some well-earned rest while Fritz and Powell share just what unfolded on that memorable flight.
Fritz and Powell — who live in Seal Rock and Newport on the Oregon coast, respectively — met nine years ago when they were assigned to work an ambulance together. They were on their way home April 24 from a vacation in the Dominican Republic to celebrate Fritz’s 54th birthday when the Delta flight crew asked if there were any medical personnel on board because a passenger was having a medical emergency.
Fritz and Powell, who also is 54, offered themselves up. So did a nurse and a passenger with basic EMT certifications. The group went to the back of the plane to assist. Fritz and Powell said not even 10 minutes had passed before another emergency arose: A flight attendant alerted them to a pregnant woman having contractions three to five minutes apart.
“We looked at the nurse and she held up her hands and said ‘I’m not that kind of nurse!’” recounted Powell, before the two friends jumped into action.
As paramedics, both Fritz and Powell are trained to deal with all sorts of medical emergencies, including births in the field. Fritz said she had assisted with one birth before. Powell, who now works as a respiratory therapist, said she had been present for hundreds of births to help newborns in case they were in respiratory distress.
Somewhere around 9 p.m. on that Delta flight, the friends walked to Aisle 14 in business class and met Blair, who told them she was certain that these weren’t Braxton Hicks contractions, which are false contractions. She said the baby was coming soon.
The paramedics say Blair, who lives on the East Coast, was on her way to Oregon to be with her mom for the birth. Though she was about 38 weeks pregnant and due in about two weeks or so, she had no signs that the birth was imminent. A doctor had signed off on the airplane trip, Blair told the paramedics.
Delta Air Lines’ policy doesn’t restrict pregnant passengers from flying, but does ask them to check with their doctors if they’re in their eighth or ninth months.
With about two hours left in the flight on April 24, Blair began to have contractions. She sat quietly, hoping to hold off until she was at a hospital in Portland before giving birth, according to the paramedics. Then, the contractions grew closer and closer together, and she had no choice but to alert the flight crew that the baby’s arrival was imminent.
Fritz and Powell said they asked the flight crew if the plane was equipped with a birthing kit, but the crew said it wasn’t. That led to some MacGyver-like moves — making do with whatever they had. That included using Powell’s sparkly pink shoelace to tie off Blair’s arm to start an IV, in addition to a flight attendant’s shoelace to tie the newborn’s umbilical cord in two places to stop the bleeding once Fritz and Powell cut it.
Fritz said Blair only pushed about half a dozen times, though the paramedics asked her to stop at one point to prevent the baby from being strangled.
“Kaarin was able to slip her hand around the cord because it was around the neck and remove the cord,” Fritz said.
At around that time, the plane was reaching its final approach, the fasten seatbelt sign was on and a flight attendant told the pair “you need to stop what you’re doing now,” Powell said. “We said, ‘Well, the head is out, so we can’t really stop.’”
Turning their attention back to the birth, Fritz said the pair coached Blair through the last stretch. “We said ‘OK. Push, push, push!’” Fritz said. “And the baby came out. We were a minute from wheels on the ground.”
Powell was able to plop down into a seat and buckle up. Fritz wasn’t.
Fritz and Powell said other passengers were very considerate, with the people in the row directly in front of the birthing mother diligently looking straight forward the entire time. The paramedics complimented the flight crew too.
“If anyone had a camera or a phone out, they made them put it away,” Fritz said.
Both paramedics said Blair, the mother, was so focused and cool-headed that most of the approximately 150 people on board had no idea she was giving birth until the plane was taxiing toward the gate. It was close to 10 p.m.
“After the baby was born, I kind of held her up and we were drying her off,” Powell said. “And people were like ‘Oh my gosh! That woman just had a baby!’”
“There were cheers,” Powell said.
“Lots of clapping,” Fritz said.
Babies born on flights are rare, considering the tens of millions of flights worldwide each year. Some documentarians who’ve tried to tally in-air births since commercial flights began peg the number at somewhere north of 70. That includes a baby in early April that entered the world on a flight from Jamaica to New York City just before landing.
For their work, Fritz and Powell said Delta offered them two $250 vouchers for future flights.
“It’s a gesture,” Fritz said.
Meanwhile, the pair said Blair has been the subject of some online criticism for flying so close to her due date. But the two paramedics think that’s uncalled for.
“She was really truly trying to fly as responsibly as possible,” Powell said.
Blair also lucked out with Fritz and Powell on board. Both are moms — Fritz a mother of three and Powell a mother of four. They’re also a team who knows how to work together from their days working an ambulance together, they said.
“It’s kind of unbelievable it happened,” Powell said, “and definitely not something that was on a bucket list for me.”
Added Fritz: “It was a once in a lifetime experience that I am so glad we were a part of. And I’m glad I got to do it with my best friend.”
©2026 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit oregonlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
