Singapore Airlines' Passenger's Terrifying Account of Horror Flight Is Traumatizing
One Singapore Airlines passenger is dead and more than a dozen other passengers still in serious condition after a bout of violent turbulence rocked a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore. Out of 228 passengers and crew, at least 30 were injured, some seriously, while the others are just beginning to process the living nightmare they experienced.
With the help of Thai authorities, some of the uninjured passengers have safely made it home to their final destination. As several of the flight's Australian passengers arrived home on May 22, they spoke out about the horrors they experienced not two days before.
The first wave of Australian passengers touched down in Sydney, Australia, physically unharmed but mentally traumatized. A couple of the passengers who spoke to Australia's @9news said that the flight attendants were just starting cabin service for breakfast when disaster struck.
"We had had a bit of turbulence, but that had stopped, and I think they had served one early breakfast," recalled Beverly Mayers. "And I noticed that one of the lockers had just come down, but no one had touched it, and I thought, 'That's strange.' And then suddenly everything went 'bang' and everything just fell."
"At one point we were just sitting down, getting ready for breakfast, and then the next minute, we just felt the plane just drop immediately. Just suddenly, out of nowhere" Ramiza Bukharn described. "And because of the pressure, a lot of people that weren't wearing seatbelts, they were pushed up to the ceiling."
The extreme turbulence, which caused the plane to drop some 6,000 feet in three minutes, wrecked the cabin as loose objects and unrestrained passengers and cabin crew became projectiles.
"Great big pieces were falling off and dropping on the floor, people getting hit in the head," said Mayers, who was in a state of "pure shock" at the time. "One lady was laying on the floor and when they tried to get her up, when the medics came on, she was screaming. It was awful."
The Australian Victims of Flight SQ321
According to 9News Australia, 56 of the flight's 211 passengers were Australian, and several others were bound for Australia as their final destination. The flight's single casualty, 73-year-old Geoffrey Kitchen, was a British grandfather and amateur actor en route to Australia with his wife for a six-week vacation. Though his cause of death was believed to have been a heart attack, this hasn't yet been confirmed.
Singapore Airlines Flight SQ321 made an emergency landing at Bangkok Airport after their devastating encounter with clear-air turbulence near the southern tip of Myanmar. Beverly Mayers and Ramiza Bukharn were among a number of Australian or Australia-bound passengers from the Singapore Airlines flight who arrived in Australia from Bangkok yesterday. However, ABC News Australia reports that at least eight of the injured passengers were Australian, and three of them remain in intensive care at Bangkok's Samitivej Srinakarin Hospital. An additional 74 passengers and 6 crew members of various nationalities are reportedly still in Bangkok, awaiting transportation home.
Compared to some of their fellow Aussies on board their nightmare flight, Mayers and Bukharn escaped relatively unharmed. But while they were spared any physical injury, the experience took a heavy psychological toll on them.
"I think it has left us traumatized," said Bukharn. "I was always really scared of turbulence, and I think after this experience, I don't think I'll be going on a plane anytime soon."
"My son has come to pick me up, and I said, I have to stay with you tonight and see my other children," said Mayers, on the verge of tears. "I've just got to hold them close."
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