One passenger died of a suspected heart attack and more than 70 passengers and crew were injured
A Singapore Airlines flight hit severe turbulence on Tuesday, flinging passengers and crew around the cabin and forcing the plane to land in Bangkok, officials and the airline said. One passenger, a 73-year-old British man, died from a suspected heart attack and a local hospital said they are treating 71 people for injuries.
The flight from London and bound for Singapore fell into an air pocket while cabin crew were serving breakfast before it encountered severe turbulence. The plane dropped 6,000 feet in about three minutes. Passengers who were not wearing their seatbelts were immediately launched into the air, one eyewitness told Reuters. They hit so hard they dented and even punched through some of the light panels over the seats.
British passenger Andrew Davies told Sky News that the seatbelt sign was illuminated but crew members didn’t have time to take their seats. “Every single cabin crew person I saw was injured in some way or another, maybe with a gash on their head,” Davies said. “One had a bad back, who was in obvious pain.”
Deaths caused by turbulence are rare. Between 2009 and 2021, 146 passengers and crew members were seriously injured in turbulence, according to data from the Federal Aviation Administration. In December 2022, 11 people were seriously hurt in turbulence on a flight from Phoenix to Honolulu.
Singapore Airlines is one of the world’s top-ranked airlines, reports The Washington Post, and has had a “robust safety record.” Its last major incident was in 2000, when a flight took off from the wrong runway in Taiwan, crashing into construction equipment and killing 83 people on board.
This post is an excerpt from a longer article I wrote for the Deseret News. You can find it here.
