Smuggled baby on an Air France flight

A girl has been smuggled in hand luggage on a flight from Istanbul to Paris. The child was discovered on board an Air France flight on March 7 and was travelling without a ticket. 

Reports suggest that that woman was in the process of adopting the child from Haiti and is a French resident. Prosecutors have decided not to press charges after that airline notified the authorities. The woman was trying to transit in Istanbul but was prevented from boarding with the child. 

The women then bought a new flight ticket and hid the child in the bag. Sources say she then boarded the next flight and placed the child at her feet under a blanket but after the girl needed to go to the toilet other passengers raised the alarm. 

It’s not clear how old the child was – one source said she was four years old, another that it was a one- or two-year-old baby.

“The cloth bag belonged to a woman sat at the back of the plane. At one point she opened the bag and her neighbour on the other row of seats saw something moving inside. He alerted flight attendants, who then discovered a baby,”

Both parties have been held at Charles de Gaulle airport while authorities investigate further.