More than 140 passengers and crew from a flight hit by heavy turbulence that left dozens injured and one dead reached Singapore on a relief flight on Wednesday morning after an emergency landing in Bangkok.
The scheduled London-Singapore flight on a Singapore Airlines 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 and at least 30 people were injured.
Singapore Airlines took 131 passengers and 12 crew on the relief flight from Bangkok, which reached Singapore just before 5am (local time).
The flight fell into an air pocket while cabin crew were serving breakfast before it encountered turbulence, prompting the pilots to request an emergency landing, Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport general manager Kittipong Kittikachorn earlier told a press conference.
There were 23 New Zealanders on the flight, Singapore Airlines confirmed, and 56 people from Australia.
The New Zealand Herald reports that two New Zealanders are among the injured, according to Samitivej Hospital.
The Singapore Airlines service SQ321 also operates in a code share agreement with Air New Zealand under the flight number NZ3321, The Herald reports.
Air New Zealand said it was working with Singapore Airlines to establish the status of 10 passengers booked on the flight through the agreement.
"Singapore Airlines has confirmed that there are multiple injuries and one fatality on board the Boeing 777-300ER aircraft," Air NZ chief flight operations and safety officer David Morgan said.
He said the airline would provide updates as soon as possible.
The British man's death was likely due to a heart attack, Kittikachorn said. He has been named as Geoffrey Ralph Kitchen.
Seven people were critically injured, some with head injuries. He added people were calm as they were led from the plane.
"Singapore Airlines offers its deepest condolences to the family of the deceased. We deeply apologise for the traumatic experience that our passengers and crew members suffered on this flight," the airline said.
The sudden turbulence occurred over the Irrawaddy Basin in Myanmar about 10 hours into the flight, the airline said. The pilot declared a medical emergency and diverted the aircraft to Bangkok, it said without giving further details.
Singapore's Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (TSIB) is looking into the incident, and the US National Transportation Safety Board is also sending representatives for support.
Aircraft tracking provider FlightRadar 24 said the flight encountered "a rapid change in vertical rate, consistent with a sudden turbulence event", based on flight tracking data.
"There were thunderstorms, some severe, in the area at the time," it said.
Weather forecasting service AccuWeather said rapidly developing, explosive thunderstorms near the flight path of Flight 321 most likely contributed to violent turbulence.
"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 will little time to react if it occurs directly in front of the plane," said Dan DePodwin, AccuWeather’s Senior Director of Forecasting Operations.
Some tallies of the injured out of the 211 passengers and 18 crew differed. The airline said 18 were hospitalised and 12 being treated in hospitals. Samitivej Hospital said it was treating 71 passengers.
Reuters was not able to confirm the sequence of events or whether the medical emergency came before the turbulence.
Photographs from the interior of the plane showed large gashes in the overhead cabin panels, gas masks and panels hanging from the ceiling and items of hand luggage strewn around. A passenger said some people's heads had slammed into the lights above the seats and punctured the panels.
"I saw things lying everywhere and many air crew injured" with bruising, Kittikachorn said after the most critically injured passengers and crew had been evacuated.
A passenger who was on the Boeing 777-300ER plane told Reuters that the incident involved the sensation of rising then falling.
"Suddenly the aircraft starts tilting up and there was shaking so I started bracing for what was happening, and very suddenly there was a very dramatic drop so everyone seated and not wearing a seatbelt was launched immediately into the ceiling," Dzafran Azmir, a 28-year-old student on board the flight told Reuters.
"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 said.
Kittikachorn said most of the passengers he had spoken to had been wearing their seatbelts.
The spokesperson for FlightRadar 24 said regarding data showing a drop in height, "our initial thinking is the turbulence event is prior to the standard descent from 37,000 to 31,000 feet. That appears to just be a flight level change in preparation for landing."
Suvarnabhumi airport said the plane requested an emergency landing at 3:35pm (local time) and landed at 3:51pm. Uninjured passengers disembarked and an another aircraft will fly them onwards. The airline said it landed at 3:45pm.
Turbulence
Turbulence-related airline accidents are the most common type, according to a 2021 study by the National Transportation Safety Board.
From 2009 through 2018, the US 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.
Singapore Airlines, which is widely recognized as one of world's leading airlines and is 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 October 31, 2000, into construction equipment on the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport after attempting to take off from the wrong runway. The crash killed 83 of the 179 people on board.
Singapore Airlines has had seven accidents according to records by the Aviation Safety Network.
Boeing BA.N said it was in touch with Singapore Airlines and was ready to provide support. It referred further questions to the airline and local authorities.
"We extend our deepest condolences to the family who lost a loved one, and our thoughts are with the passengers and crew," it said.
Singapore's Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (TSIB) will be deploying investigators to Bangkok to look into the incident.
- additional reporting RNZ
