Update: New Zealand court convicts passenger for dumping her baby in lavatory trash can

Last month I wrote about a controversy in New Zealand in which authorities were trying to figure out whether a Samoan woman who gave birth during a flight to Auckland intentionally abandoned her baby girl on board the airplane when it landed.

There were those that said the woman walked off the plane without the baby on purpose. Others said the woman merely forgot the newborn and attempted to return to the airplane to retrieve her.

Well, there was a key piece of information missing when I made my initial report.

The mother had given birth in the airplane's lavatory...and stuffed the newborn into the lavatory's trash can, which is where flight cleaners found her after arriving in New Zealand.

A Kiwi court has charged the woman, Karolaine Maika, 29, with child abandonment, and she now faces seven years in prison.

The incident happened on a Pacific Blue flight on March 19.

The infant girl is reportedly doing fine and still in the custody of New Zealand social services.

Filed under: Airlines