Grim videos show inside of Singapore flight carrying 2 Canadians

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Two Canadians were aboard the Singapore Airlines flight that ran into extreme turbulence that left one British passenger dead and dozens more injured.

“We can confirm that there are injuries and one fatality on board the Boeing 777-300ER,” the airline said in a statement. “There were a total of 211 passengers and 18 crew on board. Singapore Airlines offers its deepest condolences to the family of the deceased.”

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It added: “The nationalities of the passengers are as follows: 56 from Australia, two from Canada, one from Germany, three from India, two from Indonesia, one from Iceland, four from Ireland, one from Israel, 16 from Malaysia, two from Myanmar, 23 from New Zealand, five from the Philippines, 41 from Singapore, one from South Korea, two from Spain, 47 from the United Kingdom, and four from the United States of America.”

Flight SQ321 was en route from London’s Heathrow airport to Singapore Monday when it encountered severe turbulence and descended 6,000 feet (around 1,800 meters) in about three minutes, the carrier said Tuesday. It later landed in stormy weather in Bangkok.

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Posts from social media show images of bloodied crew members, shaken passengers, and oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling. A video of the interior of the plane after it landed shows debris strewn throughout the cabin, and dents in some of the ceiling panels.

“I didn’t understand at all the full scale of what happened until we landed,” 28-year-old passenger Dzafran Azmir told Reuters. “I didn’t realize the things that broke within the airplane, the dents that were made in the overhead luggage compartments and all the additional panelling above our heads, I thought it was just the oxygen masks coming out and then popping out the panel but in fact … heads had literally pushed through and broken those plastic panels.”

He added: “There was blood and there was bits and pieces just broken everywhere.”

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The 73-year-old British man who died from a suspected heart attack after the event has been named as Geoff Kitchen, from Thornbury near Bristol, England.

British passenger Andrew Davies told Sky News that the seatbelt sign was illuminated but that 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,” he said. “One had a bad back, who was in obvious pain.”

Kittipong Kittikachorn, general manager of Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, told a news conference that the sudden descent occurred as passengers were being served food. He said seven passengers were severely injured, and 23 passengers and nine crew members had moderate injuries. Sixteen with less serious injuries received hospital treatment and 14 were treated at the airport.

A later statement from Samitivej Srinakarin Hospital said 71 people had been treated there, including six who were severely injured. No explanation of the discrepancy was available.

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Tracking data captured by FlightRadar24 and analyzed by The Associated Press show the flight cruising at an altitude of 37,000 feet (11,300 metres) before suddenly and sharply descending to 31,000 feet (9,400 metres) over about three minutes. The aircraft then stayed at that altitude for under 10 minutes before diverting and landing in Bangkok less than a half hour later.

The sharp descent occurred as the flight was over the Andaman Sea, near Myanmar. The aircraft sent a “squawk code” of 7700 at that time, an international emergency signal.

Most people associate turbulence with heavy storms, but the most dangerous type is so-called clear air turbulence. Wind shear can occur in wispy cirrus clouds or even in clear air near thunderstorms, as differences in temperature and pressure create powerful currents of fast-moving air.

The problem of turbulence was highlighted in December, when 41 people on two separate flights hit by turbulence in the United States were hurt or received medical treatment on two consecutive days.

According to a 2021 report by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, turbulence accounted for 37.6 per cent of all accidents on larger commercial airlines between 2009 and 2018. The Federal Aviation Administration, another U.S. government agency, said after the December incidents that there were 146 serious injuries from turbulence from 2009 to 2021.

With files from the Associated Press

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