BANGKOK (AFP) – Twenty people were in intensive care in Bangkok hospitals on Wednesday after a terrifying high-altitude plunge on a flight from London during which an elderly passenger died and more than 100 people were injured.
Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 hit “sudden extreme turbulence” over Myanmar 10 hours into its journey to Singapore on Tuesday, abruptly rising and plunging several times.
One passenger said people were thrown around the cabin so violently they put dents in the ceiling during the drama at 11,300 metres, leaving dozens with head injuries.
Photos from inside the plane show the cabin in chaos, strewn with food, drinks bottles and luggage, and with oxygen masks dangling from the ceiling.
The plane, carrying 211 passengers and 18 crew, made an emergency landing at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, where medical staff used gurneys to ferry the injured to ambulances waiting on the tarmac.
A 73-year-old British man died and 104 people were injured on the flight.
A hospital in Bangkok said on Wednesday that its staff were either treating or had treated 85 of those injured, including 20 people taken to intensive care units.
The 20 were from Australia, Britain, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the Philippines, Samitivej Hospital said, without specifying how many were passengers or crew.
A relief flight carrying 131 passengers and 12 crew landed at Singapore’s Changi Airport on Wednesday morning. Relatives greeted the arrivals with hugs, but all were too shaken to talk to waiting reporters.
Andrew Davies, a British passenger aboard the Boeing 777-300ER, told BBC radio that the plane “suddenly dropped” and there was “very little warning”.
“During the few seconds of the plane dropping, there was an awful screaming and what sounded like a thud,” he said, adding that he helped a woman with a “gash on her head”.
Singapore Airlines Chief Executive Goh Choon Phong said on Wednesday the carrier is “very sorry for the traumatic experience”, and expressed condolences to the family of the deceased.
Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong sent his “deepest condolences” to the family and loved ones of the dead man – identified as Geoff Kitchen, a musical theatre director from near Bristol.
Singapore’s Transport Minister Chee Hong Tat posted on Facebook that investigators from the city-state arrived in Bangkok on Tuesday night. Since the incident involved a Boeing plane, he said, a team from the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) would be sent as well.
Scientists have long warned that climate change is likely to increase so-called clear air turbulence, which is invisible to radar.
A 2023 study found the annual duration of clear air turbulence increased by 17 per cent from 1979 to 2020, with the most severe cases increasing by more than 50 per cent.
