Fatal flight: Singapore passenger recalls turbulence

STORY: ::Singapore

::A passenger recounts the moment extreme

turbulence hit a Singapore Airlines flight

::May 22, 2024

::Dzafran Azmir / SQ321 passenger

"I saw people from across the aisle just going completely horizontal, hitting the ceiling and landing back down in really awkward positions. People, like, getting massive gashes in the head, concussions."

"It was really, really quick. Which is why, like, I think nobody could really respond to it. Like in my recollection of what happened, I was in my chair and I think I was resting at that point, but I was belted in and could start feeling that the airplane was entering some kind of turbulence. So the plane starts shaking. And at that point, like, I just know that, okay, what's going to like huddle in but like it kept getting worse and worse and worse."

"If I remember correctly, like the seatbelt signs were off. There were people within the lavatories and the crew that were working, anybody who was standing, especially the people within the lavatories and were the most injured, from what I've seen."

"Honestly, I didn't understand at all the full scale of what happened until we landed. Like, I didn't realise the things that broke within the airplane, the dents that were made in the overhead luggage compartments and all the additional kind of panelling above our heads. Like I thought it was just the oxygen masks coming out and then popping out the panel. But in fact, like heads had literally pushed through and broken plastic panels and like there was just there's blood and and there's bits and pieces just broken everywhere.”

A 73-year-old British passenger died of a suspected heart attack and at least 30 people were injured, after the scheduled London-Singapore flight SQ321 was buffeted by hard turbulence on Tuesday (May 21).

The sudden turbulence occurred over the Irrawaddy Basin in Myanmar about 10 hours into the flight, the airline said. 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 very difficult to detect.

The Boeing plane was diverted to Bangkok where it made an emergency landing.

The 28-year-old student was among the more than 140 passengers and crew who were finally brought to Singapore on a relief plane on Wednesday.