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A 73-year old British man dies, dozens hurt

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Singapore Air says pilot declared medical emergency

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Flight from London forced to divert to Bangkok

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Passenger describes how people hit overhead lockers

(Adds detail from airline on incident in 3rd and 4th paragraph,

tally on injuries in paragraphs 9-10)

By Chayut Setboonsarng and Panu Wongcha-um

BANGKOK, May 21 (Reuters) - One passenger died of a

suspected heart attack and 30 injured after a Singapore Airlines

flight hit severe turbulence on Tuesday, flinging

passengers and crew around the cabin and forcing the plane to

land in Bangkok, officials and the airline said.

The flight from London and bound for Singapore fell into an

air pocket while cabin crew were serving breakfast before it

encountered turbulence, prompting the pilots to request an

emergency landing, Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport general manager

Kittipong Kittikachorn told a press conference.

The sudden turbulence occurred over the Irrawaddy Basin in

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

pilot declared a medical emergency and diverted the aircraft to

Bangkok, it said without giving further details.

Reuters was not able to confirm the sequence of events

or whether the medical emergency came before the turbulence.

Photographs from the interior of the plane showed large

gashes in the overhead cabin panels, gas masks and panels

hanging from the ceiling and items of hand luggage strewn

around. A passenger said some people's heads had slammed into

the lights above the seats and punctured the panels.

"I saw things lying everywhere and many air crew injured"

with bruising, Kittikachorn said after the most critically

injured passengers and crew had been evacuated.

A 73-year-old British man died during the incident, likely

due to a heart attack, Kittikachorn said. Seven people were

critically injured, some with head injuries. He added people

were calm as they were led from the plane.

"Singapore Airlines offers its deepest condolences to the

family of the deceased. We deeply apologise for the traumatic

experience that our passengers and crew members suffered on this

flight," the airline said.

Some tallies of the injured out of the 211 passengers and 18

crew differed.

The airline said 18 were hospitalised and 12 being treated

in hospitals. Samitivej Hospital said it was treating 71

passengers, including six who were severely injured.

It was not immediately possible to reconstruct the incident

from publicly available tracking data, but a spokesperson for

FlightRadar 24 said it was analysing data at around 0749 GMT

which showed the plane tilting upwards and return to its

cruising altitude over the space of a minute.

A passenger who was on the Boeing 777-300ER plane told

Reuters that the incident involved the sensation of rising then

falling.

"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 a seatbelt was launched immediately into the

ceiling," Dzafran Azmir, a 28-year-old student on board the

flight told Reuters.

"Some people hit their heads on the baggage cabins overhead

and dented it, they hit the places where lights and masks are

and broke straight through it," he said.

Kittikachorn said most of the passengers he had spoken to

had been wearing their seatbelts.

The spokesperson for FlightRadar 24 said regarding data

showing a drop in height, "our initial thinking is the

turbulence event is prior to the standard descent from 37,000 to

31,000 feet. That appears to just be a flight level change in

preparation for landing."

Suvarnabhumi airport said the plane requested an emergency

landing at 3:35 p.m. local time (0835 GMT) and landed at 3:51

p.m. Uninjured passengers disembarked and an another aircraft

will fly them onwards. The airline said it landed at 3:45 pm.

TURBULENCE

Turbulence-related airline accidents are the most common

type, according to a 2021 study by the National Transportation

Safety Board.

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

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, into construction equipment on the Taiwan Taoyuan

International Airport after attempting to take off from the

wrong runway. The crash killed 83 of the 179 people on board.

Singapore Airlines has had seven accidents according to

records by the Aviation Safety Network.

Boeing ( BA ) said it was in touch with Singapore Airlines

and was ready to provide support. It referred further questions

to the airline and local authorities.

"We extend our deepest condolences to the family who lost a

loved one, and our thoughts are with the passengers and crew,"

it said.

Singapore's Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (TSIB)

will be deploying investigators to Bangkok to look into the

incident.