A woman travelling from Hong Kong to a Pacific Ocean island belonging to the USA was asked to take a pregnancy test before being allowed onto the plane.
According to the Wall Street Journal, it recently came to light that a 25-year-old Japanese citizen named Midori Nishida was boarding a Hong Kong Express Airways flight to visit her parents on the island Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands and US commonwealth nation in the Pacific Ocean.
The low-cost airline’s staff made a most unusual request, however, when they asked her to take a pregnancy test if she wanted to board the plane.
Beautiful Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. Image: Unsplash
‘Before check-in,’ Nishida explained to the Saipan Tribune, ‘I filled out a mandatory questionnaire and one of the questions asked if I was pregnant, to which I responded “no”.’ She continued: ‘Imagine my disgust when I was informed at the check-in counter that I was “randomly” selected to undergo a “fit-to-fly” medical assessment.’
Nishida, who’d gone to school and lived on the island for most of her life, at first expressed frustration that she was considered a tourist despite being a frequent flyer to Saipan. She was then escorted to a public bathroom and handed a strip on which to urinate by an authorised medical professional.
When signing a clearance form which finally allowed her to board her flight, Nishida noted that the airline was screening women whose body size or shape ‘resembled that of a pregnant person’.
The airline has since apologised for the incident but claims to have acted out of concerns arising from the US immigration authorities.
Babies born in the island nation are eligible for US citizenship and, according to the Wall Street Journal, Saipan has become as a popular ‘birth destination’ sought after by predominantly Chinese parents, whose combined number of newborns rivalled that of actual residents on Saipan in 2018.
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