The conversation between the pilot and an air traffic controller about the incident, captured on multimedia messaging application Snapchat, has gone viral, racking up more than 1 million views on YouTube.
In the exchange, which is in both Arabic and English, the air traffic controller can be heard asking the pilot to confirm the reason for his emergency landing request.
The pilot is heard affirming that "a passenger on board forgot her kid in the terminal and she refuses to continue the flight. Please confirm whether we can get back to the gate or what."
"Ok, head back to the gate. This is totally a new one for us!" the air traffic controller responds.
Multiple news sources have stated that the mother and child were reunited back in Saudi Arabia. However, there has been no official confirmation by the airline.
This is not the first time that an airplane has diverted for unusual reasons.
In 2016, a Pakistan International Airlines flight en route from Toronto to Lahore, Pakistan, was forced to make an emergency landing at Manchester Airport to Manchester Airport in England after all the toilets on the flight got clogged, the Manchester Evening News reported at the time. It took five hours for the plumbing issue to be solved. A US Airways flight bound to Louisville, Kentucky, from New York City made an emergency landing in Philadelphia over safety concerns regarding a passenger's tefillin, a set of small black leather boxes containing scrolls with verses from the Torah. The flight was met with multiple emergency vehicles and bomb squads.
"Someone on the plane construed it as some kind of [bombing] device," Christine O'Brien, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police department said at the time, the Inquisitor reported.
