“Suddenly there was a very dramatic drop so everyone seated and not wearing a seatbelt was launched immediately into the ceiling, some people hit their heads on the baggage cabins overhead and dented it,” recalled an ill-fated Singapore Airlines passenger.

There was little warning of the chaos that was about to be unleashed onboard Singapore Airlines flight SQ321. With around three hours left on the journey from London to Singapore, Malaysian student Dzafran Azmir got the uneasy feeling the Boeing 777-300R plane was tilting upwards and beginning to shake The 28-year-old braced himself and checked he had his seatbelt on. He did. Many of the other passengers did not, he said. “Suddenly there was a very dramatic drop so everyone seated and not wearing a seatbelt was launched immediately into the ceiling, 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,” Azmir told Reuters. “People dropped to the ground, my phone flew out of my hand and went a couple of aisles to the side, people’s shoes flung about,” he added. One passenger was killed and 30 injured after the flight from London fell into an air pocket before encountering turbulence en route on Tuesday, forcing it to make an emergency landing in Bangkok, officials and the airline said. “The crew and people inside the lavatories were hurt the most because we discovered people just on the ground not able to get up. There were a lot of spinal and head injuries,” Azmir said. The captain informed passengers they would be making an emergency landing in Thailand’s capital Bangkok. Once the plane was on the tarmac, nurses and rescue workers came in to check on the injured, Azmir said. “I don’t think they anticipated how bad it was,” he said. Ambulances later arrived and Azmir said he saw at least 8 people on stretchers being pulled out of the emergency exits. It took 90 minutes to evacuate the plane, he said. Also Read: Singapore Airlines SQ321 cruising at 37,000 ft falls to 31,000 ft in 3 mins: What went wrong? A passenger on the Singapore Airlines flight from London that hit severe turbulence on Tuesday recalled the horror the passengers and the crew went through during the extreme weather. Andrew Davies, who was among the 211 passengers of the flight that was forced to make an emergency landing in Bangkok, described the event as an “awful experience”. I was on that flight and helped as much as I could. Those not injured (including me) are in a holding area at Bangkok airport. My heart goes out to the gentleman who lost his life and his poor wife. Awful experience,” he said in a post on X, sharing chilling details of what happened on that flight. “Lots of people injured – including the air stewards who were stoic and did everything they could. Bangkok emergency services quick to respond. Very little warning. The seatbelt sign came on, I put on my seatbelt straightaway then the plane just dropped,” he said in another post. https://www.ndtv.com/video/1-dead-30-injured-in-severe-turbulence-on-singapore-airlines-flight-786640 In a rare incident, a passenger has been killed and 30 others suffered injuries due to severe turbulence on a flight from London to Singapore. The death has been confirmed by Singapore Airlines.

Singapore Airlines

In a statement, Singapore Airlines said flight number SQ321, which took off from Heathrow Airport in London on Monday and was headed to Singapore, “encountered severe turbulence” en route. The aircraft was diverted to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport, where it landed at 3.45 pm (local time) on Tuesday. The plane – a Boeing 777-300 ER – had 211 passengers and 18 crew members on board.

Singapore Airlines flight dropped 6,000 feet in 3 minutes

The spokesperson for FlightRadar 24 said with regard to data showing a drop in height of the Boeing 777-300ER, “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.” Eighteen people have been hospitalised and 12 are being treated in hospitals, Singapore Airlines said. Experts said such injuries usually happen when passengers are not wearing a seatbelt and the pilot has not been able to give an advanced warning because information from the weather radar does not indicate any turbulence. In such cases, passengers can be thrown around in the cockpit, which may lead to injuries.