Will the Mile-High-Mom Club be the next step for airlines?

Frank Cerabino

News item: A woman on a Florida-bound Southwest Airlines flight gave birth Sunday, causing the airliner to make an unscheduled stop in South Carolina.

The birth of the child on the Philadelphia-to-Orlando flight will make Florida routes even more unpopular than they already are among flight attendants, and possibly give airlines another way to create surcharges and fees.

■ Dear Florida traveler: We are excited to announce our new in-flight Sudden Stork service on our Florida routes. It has been a labor of love to be your favorite airline, and sometimes that means pushing extra hard to provide all our travelers with a memorable flight experience.

With this in mind, we would like to remind our expecting mothers that, as always, we will continue with our “Triple F” guarantee — that’s right, Fetuses Fly Free. But if during the flight you decide to upgrade to an unscheduled natural birth*, we’ve got you covered.

(*Births by C-section not offered at this time.)

Simply reach overhead and press the flight-attendant call button, or get your Lamaze coach to do it, and within 10 to 15 minutes, a flight attendant will arrive at your seat.

Explain that you will be add- Read Frank Cerabino’s recent columns online at ing a passenger before the scheduled landing. The flight attendant then will direct you to the in-flight magazine, which lists the menu of options you have.

For an extra $50, you can be relocated in the cabin to one of our newly added “more womb” seats. Credit cards, no cash, please.

If it’s a full flight and no addi- tional seating is available, the flight attendant will make you as comfortable as possible in your seat while creating a privacy curtain for you through the creative use of in-flight blankets, duct tape and the rubber straps from the oxygen masks.

For those women interested in a water birth, we have taken steps to modify the forward lavatory ($50 surcharge, subject to the availability based on length of the existing line at the time of request, and the