*

"I saw people ... going completely horizontal," passenger

says

*

One dead, dozens injured on Singapore Airlines flight

*

More than 140 passengers return to Singapore

By Kokkai Ng and Joseph Campbell

SINGAPORE, May 22 (Reuters) - More than 140 passengers

and crew from a Singapore Airlines flight hit by heavy

turbulence that left dozens injured and one dead finally reached

Singapore on a relief flight Wednesday morning after an

emergency landing in Bangkok.

The scheduled London-Singapore flight on a Boeing

777-300ER plane diverted to Bangkok after the plane was buffeted

by turbulence that flung passengers and crew around the cabin,

slamming some into the ceiling.

A 73-year-old British passenger died of a suspected heart

attack and at least 30 people were injured.

"I saw people from across the aisle going completely

horizontal, hitting the ceiling and landing back down in like

really awkward positions. People, like, getting massive gashes

in the head, concussions," Dzafran Azmir, a 28-year-old student

on board the flight told Reuters after arriving in Singapore.

Photographs from the interior of the plane showed gashes in

the overhead cabin panels, oxygen masks and panels hanging from

the ceiling and luggage strewn around. A passenger said some

people's heads had slammed into the lights above the seats and

punctured the panels.

Singapore Airlines took 131 passengers and 12 crew on the

relief flight from Bangkok that reached Singapore just before 5

a.m. (2100 GMT). There were 211 passengers including many

Australians, British and Singaporeans, and 18 crew on board the

original flight; injured fliers and their families remained in

Bangkok.

"On behalf of Singapore Airlines, I would like to express my

deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the

deceased," Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong said in a

video message.

Singapore's Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (TSIB)

is looking into the incident, and the U.S. National

Transportation Safety Board is also sending representatives for

support.

The plane encountered sudden extreme turbulence, Goh said,

and the pilot then declared a medical emergency and diverted to

Bangkok.

Aircraft tracking provider FlightRadar 24 said at around

0749 GMT the flight encountered "a rapid change in vertical

rate, consistent with a sudden turbulence event", based on

flight tracking data.

"There were thunderstorms, some severe, in the area at the

time," it said.

The sudden turbulence occurred over the Irrawaddy Basin in

Myanmar about 10 hours into the flight, the airline said.

Turbulence has many causes, most obviously the unstable weather

patterns that trigger storms, but this flight could have been

affected by clear air turbulence, which is very difficult to

detect.

Turbulence-related airline accidents are the most common

type of accident, according to a 2021 NTSB study.

While the airline said 30 people were injured, Samitivej

Hospital in Thailand said it was treating 71 passengers.

From 2009 through 2018, the U.S. agency found that

turbulence accounted for more than a third of reported airline

accidents and most resulted in one or more serious injuries, but

no aircraft damage.

Singapore Airlines, which is widely recognized as one of the

world's leading airlines and is a benchmark for much of the

industry, has not had any major incidents in recent years.

Its last accident resulting in casualties was a flight from

Singapore to Los Angeles via Taipei, where it crashed on Oct.

31, 2000 at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, killing 83

of the 179 people on board.

(Additional reporting by Seham Eloraby in London and Lisa

Barrington in Singapore; Editing by Peter Henderson and Stephen

Coates)