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At least one passenger has died and several others have been injured after a Singapore Airlines flight between London and Singapore encountered severe turbulence.
The airline said that flight SQ321, which left London on Monday, diverted to Bangkok and landed on Tuesday afternoon.
“We can confirm that there are injuries and one fatality on board the Boeing 777-300ER,” Singapore Airlines said in a social media post.
There were 211 passengers and 18 crew on board. Singapore Airlines said that as of 7.50pm local time, 30 people were being treated in local hospitals.
“The remaining passengers and crew are being examined and given treatment, where necessary, at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok,” it added.
It was not immediately clear whether the airline flew into bad weather, or if the problems were caused by “clear air turbulence”, which occurs in seemingly calm conditions.
The flight took off from London’s Heathrow airport at 10.38pm, and was cruising at around 500 knots at 37,000 feet off the western coast of Thailand when it began to deviate from its expected flight path.
The plane descended 6,000 feet in around five minutes, before levelling off at 31,000 feet and diverting to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, according to Flightradar24, a flight tracking service.
A passenger on board described a “sudden” and “dramatic” drop, which caused people not wearing seat belts to hit the ceiling of the plane.
“Suddenly the aircraft starts tilting up and there was shaking so I started bracing for what was happening, and very suddenly there was a very dramatic drop so everyone seated and not wearing seatbelt was launched immediately into the ceiling,” Dzafran Azmir told Reuters.
While turbulence rarely causes deaths or endangers aircraft, it is the leading cause of non-fatal injuries to passengers and crew, according to the International Air Transport Association.
Researchers expect turbulence to worsen because of changes to weather patterns caused by climate change. In 2022, airline industry body Iata forecast that the frequency of planes encountering turbulence was likely to more than double in coming years and that it would become “more severe and more damaging in its scale”.
The severe turbulence encountered by the Singapore Airlines flight typically causes “large, abrupt” changes in the altitude of a plane, and usually significant changes to airspeed, according to the US National Transportation Safety Board.
In the US, there were 163 serious injuries caused by turbulence between 2009 and 2022, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, most of which happened to crew who are more likely to be moving around the aircraft and not wearing seat belts during unexpected turbulence.
“Our priority is to provide all possible assistance to all passengers and crew on board the aircraft,” Singapore Airlines said. “We are working with the local authorities in Thailand to provide the necessary medical assistance, and sending a team to Bangkok to provide any additional assistance needed.”
Singapore Airlines and the Singapore and Thailand foreign ministries have been contacted for comment.