One Dead and Dozens Injured After London to Singapore Flight Hit by Turbulence
Incident Overview

One passenger has died and dozens have been injured after a Singapore Airlines flight between London and Singapore encountered “extreme” turbulence. The airline said flight SQ321, which left London on Monday, diverted to Bangkok and landed on Tuesday afternoon after experiencing “sudden extreme turbulence” while flying over the Irrawaddy Basin in Myanmar.

Fatality and Injuries

A 73-year-old British man died during the incident, Bangkok airport authorities said. UK media named the deceased as Geoff Kitchen. Seven other people were “severely injured” on the flight, while 30 people with minor injuries have been discharged from hospital, said Kittipong Kittikachorn, the general manager of Suvarnabhumi International Airport. There were 211 passengers and 18 crew on board the Boeing 777, Singapore Airlines said.

Turbulence and Its Causes

Turbulence is a growing problem for airlines and the leading cause of injuries on board passenger planes. It is expected to worsen because of climate change. Extreme turbulence, described by the US Weather Service as leaving “aircraft practically impossible to control,” is rare and can cause structural damage to a plane.

Flight Details

Flight SQ321 took off from London’s Heathrow airport at 10.38pm local time on Monday or 9.38pm UTC, the standard time used in aviation. It was cruising at 500 knots at a height of 37,000 feet off the western coast of Thailand when it encountered turbulence.

Flight-tracking data sent from the aircraft showed repeated changes in altitude, consistent with hitting turbulence at 07.49am UTC, said Ian Petchenik, an executive at flight tracking group Flightradar24. Passengers were being served breakfast at the time of the turbulence, and there were chaotic scenes on board, Kittikachorn said.

Passenger Accounts

“The air pockets must have been quite severe from looking inside the plane,” he added. Photos from inside the aircraft showed food and drink strewn on the floor, damaged ceiling panels, and oxygen masks hanging down in the cabin.

A passenger on board described a “sudden” and “dramatic” drop, which caused people not wearing seatbelts to hit the ceiling of the plane. “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 told Reuters.

The plane proceeded to descend 6,000 feet in about five minutes, as it diverted to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport, a normal rate of descent for aircraft of this type. It was not immediately clear whether the airline flew into bad weather, or if the problems were caused by “clear air turbulence,” which occurs in seemingly calm conditions, but Petchenik said there were storms in the region at the time.

Turbulence Impact and Historical Context

While turbulence rarely endangers aircraft, it is the leading cause of non-fatal injuries to passengers and crew, according to the International Air Transport Association. In December 2022, 36 people were hurt, including 11 seriously, after turbulence on board a flight from Phoenix to Honolulu, while three months later a Lufthansa flight from Austin to Frankfurt diverted to Washington after seven people were injured by turbulence.

In the US, there were 163 serious injuries caused by turbulence between 2009 and 2022, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, most of which happened to crew who are more likely to be moving around the aircraft and not wearing seatbelts during unexpected turbulence.

Researchers expect turbulence to worsen because of changes to weather patterns caused by climate change. In 2022, airline industry body IATA forecast that the frequency of planes encountering turbulence was likely to more than double in coming years and that it would become “more severe and more damaging in its scale.”

Airline and Government Response

“Our priority is to provide all possible assistance to all passengers and crew on board the aircraft,” Singapore Airlines said. “We are working with the local authorities in Thailand to provide the necessary medical assistance, and sending a team to Bangkok to provide any additional assistance needed.”

Singapore’s President Tharman Shanmugaratnam expressed his condolences for the loss of life and injuries in a Facebook post. “We do not have the details of those affected but know that government ministries and agencies, as well as Singapore Airlines, are doing their utmost to support all those affected and working with the authorities in Bangkok,” he said.