“The plane crashed suddenly, without warning. I remember seeing objects and things flying in the air. I was covered in coffee. It was very bad turbulence,” Andrew Davies, a British passenger on board the Boeing, said on Wednesday. A 300ER en route from London to Singapore made an emergency landing in Bangkok after severe turbulence.
“I hit my head on the ceiling, so did my wife, and some standing passengers did somersaults in the air,” said another passenger, 68. “My family and I are lucky that we didn’t die,” he added.
Singapore Airlines said it was cooperating with authorities in their investigation into the cause of the incident and apologized. One person was killed and more than 70 were injured, 20 seriously.
Jeffrey Kitchen was the only fatality. The 73-year-old Briton was accompanied by his wife, who is in hospital. They were going on vacation for six weeks.
According to an airport spokesman, Jeffrey had heart problems and suffered a heart attack. “I helped carry him, get him out of the seat and put him on the floor so the doctors could perform CPR,” Andrew Davis said.
“It’s a terrible shock, they were very adventurous and had been planning a holiday for a long time. They spent their last weekend with their grandchildren because they weren’t going to see them for a while,” the friend said.