More than 140 passengers and crew from a Singapore Airlines flight hit by severe turbulence that left dozens injured and one man dead have arrived in Singapore, a day after their aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing in Bangkok.
The 131 passengers and 12 crew arrived on a relief flight early on Wednesday morning after their original flight from London struck “sudden extreme turbulence” about 10 hours into the flight as it was south of Myanmar.
A 73-year-old British passenger died of a suspected heart attack, and at least 30 people were injured after the Boeing 777-300ER dropped 6,000 feet (1,800 metres) in about three minutes.
“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 Malaysian student who was on the flight, told the Reuters news agency after arriving in Singapore.
Videos and photos posted on social media showed frightened passengers grabbing the armrests, dishevelled members of the cabin crew – one with blood on her forehead – oxygen masks, sheets of plastic from the overhead cabin panels and other parts of the interior dangling from the ceiling with food, drink bottles and belongings strewn across the floor.
There were 211 passengers on board including people from Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and the United Kingdom. The injured and their families remained in Bangkok.
“We are very sorry for the traumatic experience that everyone on board went through,” Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong said in a video on social media. He said the airline was providing all necessary support and would fully cooperate in investigations into the incident.
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.
The United States…
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