Twenty people who traveled on board the Singapore Airlines flight, which experienced turbulence before an emergency landing in Bangkok on Tuesday, are in intensive care in hospitals in the Thai capital, the establishments announced on Wednesday, May 22.
The patients from Australia, Britain, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the Philippines were in the intensive care units of Samitivej Srinakarin and Samitivej Sukhumvit hospitals.
Singapore Airlines Flight SQ321, carrying 211 passengers and 18 crew members, experienced sudden, extreme turbulence at 11,000 meters above Myanmar ten hours after takeoff, rising suddenly and plunging repeatedly .
A 73-year-old British passenger died on board the London-Singapore plane and 104 other people on board were injured. On Wednesday, 131 passengers and 12 crew members, a majority of the people on the plane, were finally able to land in Singapore via another flight.
“Very little warning”
Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong offered his condolences to the deceased’s family and said he was “truly sorry for the traumatic experience” faced by those on board, in a video message.
“It’s too early to know exactly what happened. But I think passengers are generally lacking in precautions, Anthony Brickhouse, an American aviation security expert, told Agence France-Presse. As soon as the signal goes off, most of them immediately unfasten their seat belts. »
Andrew Davies, a British passenger on board, told BBC Radio 5 that the plane had “suddenly dropped” as the seat belt signal had just come on and there had been “very little warning”. ‘warnings’.
According to a study carried out in 2023, the annual duration of turbulence increased by 17% between 1979 and 2020 and severe, rarer turbulence by more than 50%.