Dozens of passengers injured on flight from London to Singapore

Many passengers on a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore experienced fear and panic due to severe turbulence along the plane’s route. Dozens of travelers were injured, one died, as doctors previously reported, possibly from a heart attack. About it informs Reuters agency.

On Wednesday at about five o’clock in the morning the Boeing 777 arrived in Singapore.

The passengers silently left the plane, not paying attention to the reporters who were waiting for details of the emergency.

A scheduled London-Singapore flight was diverted to Bangkok after the plane flew through turbulence. The shaking was so strong that passengers were thrown around the cabin, some of them hitting their heads on the ceiling.

Singapore’s Transport Safety Investigations Bureau (TSIB) is investigating the incident, and the US National Transportation Safety Board is sending representatives to support passengers.

Sudden turbulence began over the Ayeyarwaddy Basin in Myanmar about 10 hours into the flight, the airline said.

As noted by Reuters, turbulence has many causes, the most obvious of which is unstable weather conditions. In this flight, the cause could be so-called clear air turbulence, which is very difficult to detect, the publication says.

According to a 2021 NTSB study, plane crashes involving turbulence are the most common type of flight accident.

Photos from inside the plane showed large cuts in overhead panels, oxygen masks and panels hanging from the ceiling, and carry-on luggage scattered throughout. Some passengers hit their heads on the ceiling of the cabin.

An airline spokesman said 30 people were injured. However, Samitivej Hospital in Thailand said it was treating 71 passengers.

• From 2009 to 2018, the US agency found that turbulence accounted for more than a third of reported aviation accidents, and most resulted in one or more serious injuries but no damage to the aircraft.
• Singapore Airlines, recognized as one of the world’s leading airlines, is the benchmark for much of the industry. The aircraft of this company, as noted by Reuters, have not encountered any serious incidents in recent years.
• The last fatal crash was a flight from Singapore to Los Angeles via Taipei, where it crashed on October 31, 2000 at Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport. Then 83 of the 179 people on board died.