A woman gave birth to a boy two weeks before her due date at 30,000 feet during flight from Istanbul to Chicago

• A woman gave birth to a newborn baby son, Mehdi, during a Turkish Airlines flight.
• Her water broke mid-flight while the plane was 30,000 feet in the air, Travel + Leisure reported.
• A part-time neurosurgeon assisted the mother and flight crew with the birth.

A woman gave birth to a baby mid-flight two weeks before her due date while she was traveling with Turkish Airlines.

Travel + Leisure reported that the woman, originally from Morocco, traveled with her husband on the September 27 flight from Istanbul to Chicago. Although the flight was reportedly scheduled two weeks before her due date, the woman's water broke at 30,000 feet, prompting the cabin crew to ask passengers over the loudspeaker if a doctor was on board.

Turkish Airlines did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

The woman, whose identity has not been made public, gave birth to a son named Mehdi, according to the report.

Dr. Feridun Kubilay of New Orleans happened to be among the passengers and made his way to the front of the plane. Kubilay, a permanent US resident who works as a part-time surgeon in Turkey, told Nola.com he hadn't delivered a baby in almost 40 years.

Kubilay was on that particular Turkish Airlines flight because he had decided to delay his trip back to the US by a week. He told the outlet that the woman started complaining of abdominal pain - which he initially thought was food poisoning or appendicitis - before learning the woman was nine months pregnant.

"If I didn't change my ticket, I don't know what happens to that lady," Kubilay told Nola.com. "Someone or something [larger] arranged for me to be on that airplane."

Kubilay told the outlet that "she was screaming" and "the entire airplane was scared."

Turkish Airlines to Travel + Leisure that the woman soon gave birth to her newborn son and met with a medical team when she arrived in Chicago.

"I was so happy everything was OK," Kubilay told Nola.com. He added that the mother wanted to name her child after him but later settled on Mehdi, which means "rightly guided one."