Shaken passengers arrive in Singapore after deadly turbulence-hit flight
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[May 22, 2024]
By Kokkai Ng and Joseph Campbell
SINGAPORE (Reuters) -More than 140 passengers and crew from a Singapore
Airlines flight hit by heavy turbulence that left dozens injured and one
dead finally reached Singapore on a relief flight on Wednesday morning
after an emergency landing in Bangkok.
The London-Singapore flight on a Boeing 777-300ER plane diverted to
Bangkok after the plane was buffeted by turbulence that flung passengers
and crew around the cabin, slamming some into the ceiling.
A 73-year-old British passenger died of a suspected heart attack,
according to an airport official, and Bangkok's Samitivej Hospital said
20 passengers were in intensive care, nine had undergone surgery, while
five more were awaiting surgery.
"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," Dzafran
Azmir, a 28-year-old student onboard the flight, told Reuters after
arriving in Singapore.
Photographs of the interior of the plane showed gashes in the overhead
cabin panels, oxygen masks and panels hanging from the ceiling and
luggage strewn around. A passenger said some people's heads had slammed
into the lights above the seats and broken the panels.
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Singapore Airlines flew 131 passengers and 12 crew on the relief flight
from Bangkok, which reached Singapore just before 5 a.m. (2100 GMT).
There were 211 passengers including many Australians, British and
Singaporeans, and 18 crew on the original flight. Injured fliers and
their families remained in Bangkok.
Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport general manager Kittipong Kittikachorn said
on Tuesday seven people were critically injured.
"On behalf of Singapore Airlines, I would like to express my deepest
condolences to the family and loved ones of the deceased," Singapore
Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong said in a video message.
Officers from Singapore's Transport Safety Investigation Bureau arrived
in Bangkok on Tuesday night, Singapore's Transport Minister Chee Hong
Tat said in a statement on Facebook.
As the incident involves a U.S. company, Boeing, which makes the
777-300ER aircraft, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
was sending a representative and four technical advisers to support the
investigation, he said.
The plane encountered sudden extreme turbulence, Goh said, and the pilot
then declared a medical emergency and diverted to Bangkok.
Aircraft tracking provider FlightRadar 24 said the flight encountered "a
rapid change in vertical rate, consistent with a sudden turbulence
event" at 0749 GMT, based on flight tracking data.
"There were thunderstorms, some severe, in the area at the time," it
said.
Weather forecasting service AccuWeather said on Tuesday that rapidly
developing, explosive thunderstorms near the flight path of Flight 321
most likely contributed to violent turbulence.
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A passenger who was on board the flight SQ321 from London, which
experienced severe turbulence that resulted in one fatality and
several injuries and made an emergency landing at Suvarnabhumi
Airport in Bangkok, arrives at Changi Airport in Singapore May 22,
2024. SPH/The Straits Times/Ariffin Jamar via REUTERS
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2017/Jul/22/images/ads/current/rohlfs_lda_072017.png)
"Developing thunderstorms often have strong updrafts, a zone of
upward moving air, that rises very rapidly, sometimes at more than
100 mph, and can leave pilots with little time to react if it occurs
directly in front of the plane," said Dan DePodwin, AccuWeather’s
senior director of forecasting operations.
The sudden turbulence occurred over the Irrawaddy Basin in Myanmar,
about 10 hours into the flight, Singapore Airlines said.
"It is not a rare occurrence for big thunderstorms in the Bay of
Bengal. There are always the chances of bumps," said an airline
pilot who regularly flies to Singapore and Southeast Asia. The pilot
declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to
the media.
"We were about 30 miles off track flying around the thunderstorms
two days ago on the way to Singapore," the pilot added.
Turbulence has many causes, most obviously the unstable weather
patterns that trigger storms, but this flight could have been
affected by clear air turbulence, which is difficult to detect.
Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight
Attendants-CWA, representing over 50,000 workers at 20 airlines,
said it is important for passengers to wear seatbelts whenever
seated.
"It is a matter of life and death," Nelson said.
Turbulence-related airline accidents are the most common type of
accident, according to a 2021 NTSB study.
From 2009 through 2018, the U.S. agency found that turbulence
accounted for more than a third of reported airline accidents and
most resulted in one or more serious injuries, but no aircraft
damage.
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Singapore Airlines, which is widely recognized as one of the world's
leading airlines and is seen as a benchmark for much of the
industry, has not had any major incidents in recent years.
Its last accident resulting in casualties was a flight from
Singapore to Los Angeles via Taipei, where it crashed on Oct. 31,
2000 at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, killing 83 of the
179 people on board.
Singapore Airlines shares were not trading on Wednesday because of a
public holiday in Singapore.
(Additional reporting by Seham Eloraby in London and Lisa Barrington
in Seoul; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Peter Henderson,
Stephen Coates, Gerry Doyle and Kim Coghill)
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