Passengers aboard a Singapore Airlines flight that hit severe turbulence, killing a man, recounted the horror and said that the plane suddenly dropped and that there was very little warning.
Dzafran Azmir, a Malaysian student on board flight, SQ321, said that the passengers who were not wearing seatbelts were launched into the ceiling when the Boeing 777-300R encountered sudden extreme turbulence at an altitude of 37,000 feet.
A 73-year-old British man died and more than 70 people were injured on Tuesday after the Singapore Airlines flight, operating from London to Singapore, hit severe turbulence, triggering an emergency landing in Bangkok.
“I saw people from across the aisle going completely horizontal, hitting the ceiling, and landing back down in like really awkward positions. People, like, getting massive gashes in the head, concussions,” Azmir told Reuters.
“Suddenly there was a very dramatic drop so everyone seated and not wearing a seatbelt was launched immediately into the ceiling, some people hit their heads on the baggage cabins overhead and dented it, they hit the places where lights and masks are, and broke straight through it,” he added.
Andrew Davies, a British passenger, told BBC that he saw people with head lacerations and bleeding ears. “During the few seconds of the plane dropping, there was an awful screaming and what sounded like a thud,” he said.
“I was covered in coffee. It was incredibly severe turbulence,” he said, adding that he helped a woman who was “screaming in agony” with a “gash on her head”.
Another passenger, Jerry, told BBC that there was no warning before the “plane plunged”.
“I hit my head on the ceiling, my wife did – some poor people who were walking around ended up doing somersaults,” the 68-year-old recalled.
Initial data analysis by the aviation tracking service Flightradar24 suggested the flight experienced more than one minute of extreme turbulence at around 37,000 feet over Myanmar, during which it violently rose and plunged several times. The aircraft later affected a sharp, controlled descent and diverted to Bangkok.
Singapore Airlines said that the flight had taken off from London’s Heathrow Airport and “encountered sudden extreme turbulence” over Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Basin.
Most Injured Passengers Suffered Blows To Head
Kittipong Kittikachorn, the director of Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, where the plane made an emergency landing, said that most of the injured passengers on the flight suffered blows to the head
“I saw things lying everywhere and many aircrew injured” with bruising, Kittikachorn said after the most critically injured passengers and crew had been evacuated.
Kittikachorn said most of the passengers he had spoken to had been wearing their seatbelts.
Some tallies of the injured differed as the airline said 18 were hospitalised and 12 were being treated in hospitals, while a hospital said it was treating 71 passengers.
(With agency inputs)
