Worst turbulence accident in decades on Singapore Airlines flight

Earlier this week Flights with Singapore Airlines out of London To Singapore was thrown into chaos and forced emergency landing in Bangkok after severe turbulence in which a 73-year-old Briton died and more than 104 other passengers were injured. In just a few minutes Boeing 777-300ER fell nearly 6,000 feet.

Oxygen masks fell down, but also some of the boxes that actually held them in place, according to the Wall Street Journal. People were thrown through the air across the corridor. That is how much force is meant here. Now we get an insight into the events of those terrible minutes on The plane were like Passengers who were there.

Ali Bukhari, a 27-year-old Australian engineer who was returning from his honeymoon with his wife, spoke to the Wall Street Journal about what they saw and felt:

“My wife and I thought we were going to die,” Bukhari said. “We didn’t think we would make it.”

Bukhari and his wife were unharmed; they were wearing seat belts. However, many others were seriously injured. Blood ran down their faces. Someone hit the chest of a man whose body was lying on the ground, Bukhari said.

At that moment, a frightening thought occurred to him: What if there was something wrong with the plane? He considered looking through a window for external damage, but he resisted, afraid of what he might see. Surely turbulence couldn’t do that much damage, he thought.

The aircraft got into one of the worst Turbulence-related accidents ever, and the 73-year-old man who died was the first death on a commercial flight with turbulence in nearly three decades. 104 other passengers received medical treatment in Bangkok, and 20 of them are still in intensive care.

Here you can learn more about the injuries of the passengers, WSJ:

At one of the hospitals where many of the victims were taken, six patients were found to have skull and brain injuries, and 22 suffered spinal or spinal cord injuries. Some patients showed signs of paralysis, although it is not yet known whether the damage is permanent, said Dr. Adinun Kittiratanapaibool, director of Samitivej Srinakarin Hospital, a private medical facility. At least 17 patients have undergone surgery.

The drain also spoke to Keith Davis, a 59-year-old landscape architect from Australia, who said the incident shocked him. Davis was adjust his seat when he noticed that his wife’s water glass was shaking. But before he could do so, he and his wife were already in the air.

His wife hit a luggage rack and then landed in the aisle. His head went through a ceiling panel and he landed on his seat.

(…)

He said the first thing he did was lean over his wife and ask her if she was OK. “Then I realized I was bleeding all over her,” he said.

His wife, Kerry Jordan, is in intensive care but is stable and conscious. Davis had mostly superficial injuries – a cut to his hairline that was bleeding profusely and a black eye – and localized pain to his right shoulder.

In the chaotic moments after the incident, his biggest concern was keeping his wife calm. He wrapped his legs around her to hold her in place and prevent anyone from moving her until they were safe, he said. The couple, who were on holiday in the UK, now just want to go home – but that means having to get on another plane.

WSJ I also spoke to a passenger, 54-year-old Andrew Davies, who was not seriously injured, so he went around the cabin to help other people who were not so lucky.

Davies said the seatbelt sign came on just before the fall. “It was a very sudden, sudden fall,” he said. It seemed to end as abruptly as it had begun.

“I didn’t really have enough time to think, ‘Oh my God, is this going to end now?'” he said.

As Davies went around the plane to help the injured, he saw passengers running in all directions, squeezing past each other, weaving through fallen objects and even people sprawled on the floor, he said.

A man in business class had a large cut on his head. Further down, another man was holding his chest and appeared to be in great pain. A woman had injured her back and was screaming in pain. A cut on another person’s ear was bleeding from her white shirt.

Davies and others lifted an unconscious elderly man from his seat and placed him next to an emergency door, where there was more room. A passenger with medical training called for a defibrillator, which a limping cabin crew member brought over. They performed CPR for at least 20 minutes, and then someone said, “I think we need to stop,” Davies recalled.

“That’s my husband, that’s my husband,” his widow kept saying.

About 15 minutes after the incident pilot – who was “visibly shaken”, limped into the cabin and told the passengers what had happened and what he had seen was pretty much a nightmare. This is what it looked like inside, from the Wall Street Journal:

After the turbulence, which lasted about a minute, the cabin looked like it had been hit by a hurricane. Food and drinks were scattered in the overhead bins. Some ceiling panels had fallen off, causing the interior of the plane – a tangle of pipes and tubes – to fall out.

In the hallways and kitchens where flight attendants prepare meals, trays have fallen off shelves. Chip bags, water bottles, broken wine glasses, coffee cups, kettles, apples and kiwi slices were scattered all over the floor.

Okay, I don’t want to give too much away. You really should go to Wall Street Journal You can find more eyewitness accounts of what happened on Singapore Airlines Flight 321, as well as lots of pictures from inside the plane, here. It’s really scary.

A version of this article originally appeared on Jalopnik.