“May God be with us. Can we come back or what?” the pilot says to his air traffic controller.

At first, the operator didn’t know what to do – this is not something they encounter in training. Planes don’t turn around for lost items, no matter how valuable. But this was no item – it was a human. And there was only one thing to do.

“This flight is requesting to come back…a passenger forgot her baby in the waiting area, the poor thing,” the operator tells his colleague.

There’s still an air of confusion in the tower at the epic blunder as the operator has to make sure he heard this correctly one last time and asks the pilot to repeat why he wants to turn the plane around.

“We told you, a passenger left her baby in the terminal and refuses to continue the flight,” the pilot repeats.

We’re not sure what refusing to continue to fly might entail, since there’s not much a passenger can do once they’re in the sky, but we can certainly sympathize with a mother who was so suddenly shaken by her horrible mistake.

“Ok, head back to the gate. This is totally a new one for us!” the operator eventually replied.

Designating the situation an emergency worthy of turning around the plane earned the pilot kudos from passengers and colleagues.

While there was no further information reported to the press about the incident or the deplaning, Newsweek reports that it appears that the mother and child were reunited shortly after landing.

In addition to some savage “Home Alone” comparisons, commenters (who, let’s remember, have absolutely no knowledge of the situation) have surmised that the mother must have been busy on her phone while she forgot her baby.

Others simply couldn’t process the error.

“One word: HOW!!!????” exclaimed one viewer.

It’s a question most of us are asking but one we’ll likely never get the answer to. The mother was never named and there were no further stories.

And that’s probably for the best. You don’t want to find out someday while browsing online that your mom forgot you in the airport one time when you were a baby.

You can scroll down below to hear audio from the pilot’s conversation with air traffic control.

It appears to have been taken on Snapchat or another similar messaging platform by someone in the air traffic control tower.