An Australian passenger on the terrifying Singapore Airlines flight that was disrupted by turbulence has spoken about how it was the “most traumatizing experience” that he and his new wife had ever endured.
On Tuesday, while en route from London to Singapore, Ali Buhari and over sixty other Australians were on board aircraft SQ321, which experienced an abrupt descent of over six thousand feet in five minutes.
An air pocket generated violent turbulence for the Boeing 777-300ER aircraft while flying in the Gulf of Martabar, off the coast of Myanmar.
According to Buhari, who was returning from his honeymoon with his wife, the cabin descended into chaos as passengers were violently ejected from their seats.
When asked about the three seconds of freefall, he said on Thursday that they hadn’t felt or heard anything just before the jet plummeted.
As he and several others “temporarily blacked out” during the freefall, it was only after they came back to their senses that they realized the extent of the harm inflicted by the plunge.
Folks were scattered about. A large number of oxygen masks had also fallen. There was blood on the ceiling of the cabin.
Thanks to their seatbelts, the newlyweds escaped the accident unharmed, although other passengers suffered cuts and bruises.
Geoff Kitchen, 73 years old and from the United Kingdom, died on the trip following what seemed to be a heart attack.
Linda, his wife, was seated next to him; she is presently in the ICU after suffering severe spine injuries in the freefall.
According to David Evans, a seasoned pilot and flight simulator teacher for Qantas, this area of the sky “is fairly notorious” among airlines due to the extreme weather conditions that may occur there.
He went on to say that when pilots and cabin staff encounter turbulence, they often implement safety protocols.
Mr. Evans said that when they experience that kind of turbulence, they use a turbulence penetration method to reduce the aircraft’s speed.
But first, the hope is that everyone is wearing their seatbelts.
