Gatwick Airport workers helped deliver a baby when a mother went off a flight and straight into labour.

The expectant mum arrived on an Air European flight from Jersey. She was taken to the stretcher room in the South Terminal where ambulance paramedic Clare Walton and the terminal operations manager Karen O'Brien delivered a healthy 4lb boy.

Gatwick fire service helped with the delivery.

Customer services manager Tim Bailey, who speaks Portuguese, was roped in when it was found that the mother did not speak English. Another manager, David Lane, provided hot water and towels.

The teenage mother and her baby - born a month premature but healthy - were taken to East Surrey Hospital, Redhill, where they were recovering today.

Clare said it was the first time she had made a delivery since she became an ambulance worker 12 years ago.

She said: "An on-the-spot delivery is fairly unusual. Normally there is time to get to a hospital.

"In this case we were preparing to take her to hospital when she gave an extra hard push and I could see the baby's head. I realised there was no time to transfer her."

An airport spokesman said: "We believe this is the first baby to be born at the airport since it opened in 1958."