Fife family watch maiden voyage of plane named after daughter

The parents of a Fife toddler, who passed away from a rare form of epilepsy, watched a plane named after her take off on its maiden flight.

The emotional family watched the plane take off on its maiden voyage

When two-year-old Edie Murphy passed away last October, a family friend entered her name in a competition to have a Boeing 787 named after her as tribute.

The campaign went viral after Edie’s story was told, and more than 130,000 people voted for the craft to be named after her.

The Thomson’s aircraft launched its maiden flight from Manchester Airport on Saturday morning, on its way to Mexico, watched by Edie’s parents Cheryl and Tom and her nine month old sister Annie.

Edie Murphy passed away last October

Ahead of the visit, Cheryl said: “The people who go on that plane tomorrow or in the future may not know why the plane is called Edie or her special story but our beautiful girl’s name is on a plane that’s taking families off on holidays to make their own very special memories.

“One thing you really struggle with when you lose a child is that you are never going to have anything new of that child but the plane campaign started the day after Edie’s funeral and it has given us a really special new memory of her.

“The plane will go round the world with Edie’s name on it to places that Tom and I will never go to and would never have been able to take Edie to ourselves.

Edie Murphy passed away last October

“It’s something just for her.”

Edie passed away last October in Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children, just a week after being rushed to the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy suffering convulsions.

It later emerged she had a rare form of epilepsy called hemiconvulsion hemiplegia syndrome, which is undetectable until a seizure occurs.

Edie’s family and friends have carried out a series of fundraisers for the Sick Kids Friends Foundation in memory of Edie.

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