The interior of Singapore Airline flight SQ321 is pictured after an emergency landing at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Thailand on Tuesday.
The flight on a Boeing N777-300ER from London to Singapore hit severe turbulence on Tuesday when the plane was flying 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 before making an emergency landing at Suvarnabhumi airport.
Oxygen masks and panels hanging from the ceiling and luggage strewn around.
There were 211 passengers and 18 crew on board. Most of the passengers are Australians, British and Singaporean.
While the airline said 30 people were injured, Samitivej Hospital in Thailand said it was treating 71 passengers.
It has been confirmed that a 73-year-old British passenger died of a suspected heart attack.
"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 Malaysian student on board the flight told Reuters after arriving in Singapore.
Azmir said he got the uneasy feeling the Boeing 777-300R plane was tilting upwards and beginning to shake when it was around three hours left on the journey from London to Singapore,
The 28-year-old braced himself and checked he had his seatbelt on. He did. Many of the other passengers did not, he said.
The flight fell into an air pocket while cabin crew was serving breakfast before it encountered turbulence, prompting the pilots to request an emergency landing, Suvarnabhumi airport general manager Kittipong Kittikachorn told a press conference in Bangkok.
"The crew and people inside lavatories were hurt the most because we discovered people just on the ground not able to get up. There were a lot of spinal and head injuries,"Azmir said.
The equipment attached to the ceiling panels hung down, while water bottles and other containers were scattered across the flight attendant area.
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.
The airplane in the deadly accident at Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok.
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.
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.
