- Author, Kelly Ng and Hannah Ritchie
- Role, in Singapore and Sydney
When Eva Khoo received a phone call last week informing her that the Singapore Airlines flight her family was on had “encountered an incident”, she was told not to worry.
But hours after the plane’s emergency landing in Bangkok, the 47-year-old woman was still unable to contact her brother and pregnant sister-in-law who were on board the flight to Singapore from London, with a friend and four people. others in their family.
When she finally heard from her brother late at night, it was just one sentence: ICU.
“Then we stopped hearing it. “It made me even more anxious,” she told the BBC in a telephone interview. She then heard from her sister-in-law, who told her she was in hospital but didn’t know where the others were.
The “unexpected severe turbulence” that hit the plane left one person dead in the air and nearly 50 others, including two crew members and a toddler, in hospital, many of them seriously injured . More than 20 people have been admitted to intensive care with spinal injuries.
Tuesday night was “agonizing,” Ms Khoo said. “We didn’t know if our loved ones were dead or alive, or how serious their injuries were. »
The next day, she discovered that all seven were hospitalized in Bangkok. Five of them were in the intensive care unit of Samitivej Srinakarin Hospital.
She decided to fly to Thailand from Kuala Lumpur, where she lives. “I was relieved when I finally got to meet them, but it was dreadful to see many of them wearing neck and neck braces due to their spinal and back injuries. »
It would take a few more days for him to finally ask what exactly had happened on the flight.
“It was like going down a vertical roller coaster”
Khoo Boo Leong and his wife Saw Rong were returning from a two-week trip to Switzerland and London. Singapore was meant to be a transit stopover on the way to Malaysia. The flight – which had 211 passengers and 18 crew on board – was in the tenth hour of its journey, passing over Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Basin when turbulence struck.
Ms Khoo says her brother remembers the plane starting to shake. “He rushed to find his seat belt, but before he could do anything, he was hoisted to the ceiling. It hit the overhead bin, then seconds later it collapsed into the aisle. Their belongings were scattered everywhere,” she said.
He and his wife were seated near the center of the plane. Ms Saw, two months pregnant, was thrown from her seat. The impact caused fractures to his back, which required surgery.
A few rows away, Keith Davis, who was on board with his wife Kerry Jordan, remembers being plunged into a “weightless situation”.
“We were launched into space, hurtling towards the ceiling. It was like we were floating,” said Mr Davis, who spoke to the BBC from hospital in Bangkok. He had a black eye and his head was bandaged.
“(We) were left hanging, in complete shock and disbelief, looking at everything that floated. And then the next moment you realize you’re going straight back down… It was absolutely horrible,” said the 59-year-old Australian.
Ms Jordan, 52, was thrown into the driveway. The impact on her spine was so severe that she had to lie there for the rest of the trip, even when the plane landed.
“I leaned over to her and asked, ‘Are you okay’? She was able to speak quite softly… And then I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’m dripping blood on her dress,'” he said.
Ms. Jordan still had a piece of seat belt in her hand, he recalled. “The girl behind us was screaming in extreme pain. I did not know what to do. I felt absolutely useless,” Mr Davis said.
Ali Bukhari, who was sitting with his wife Ramiza, said the plane “went into free fall.”
“It was terrifying. It’s like going down a vertical roller coaster. The oxygen masks were all out, parts of the plane’s interior were damaged… I thought it was because of the force of the turbulence, but a lot of it was because everyone who didn’t were not wearing seat belts flew through the air and hit the ceiling,” said the 27-year-old Australian, speaking to the BBC from Sydney.
“We saw blood on the ceiling… It was just total chaos. There were a lot of people on the ground,” he said.
Mr. Bukhari and his wife were not as seriously injured because they were wearing belts.
“I have always removed my seat belt when the seat belt lights are off. But just by chance, I don’t know why, I just got it at that time,” Mr Bhukari said. Yet they were “mentally prepared that we were going to die.”
Ms. Bukhari, who has long been afraid of flying, was suffering from a panic attack.
Mr. Bukhari said: “I just spent my time keeping my wife as calm as possible… We started saying as many prayers as possible. »
Image source, Ali Bukhari
After a few minutes, the pilot made an announcement.
“He said, ‘We’re not sure what happened.’ But it seems we experienced a turbulence event, it was unexpected. He really looked very shaken. The other crew members “looked pretty beat up” as they limped back and forth to help injured passengers, he recalled.
Meanwhile, Mr Davis’s seatmate, Toby Pearl, from Wales, was performing CPR on an unconscious passenger. Unfortunately, 73-year-old Briton Geoff Kitchen remained unconscious and later died from a suspected heart attack.
“A nice touch”
Mr Davis described his disbelief when the plane finally landed. “Hats off to the pilot, he brought that plane down. When he just kissed the tarmac, it was like, “Have we actually landed?” It was the most beautiful landing on the tarmac,” he said.
Soon after, the Bangkok medical team boarded the plane. “We were all labeled and categorized,” Mr. Davis said. All the while, Ms Jordan was lying in a “clearly uncomfortable position”, he said.
“(I was) just thinking, how are we going to get her out of here?…It was a bit of a mess,” he said.
Ms. Jordan still has no feeling “from her waist down,” but she made “gradual but steady progress” after a few days in the hospital, Mr. Davis said.
He hopes the hospital will issue a fitness-to-fly certification soon “so we can get Kerry home as quickly as possible.”
“We are really, really grateful to be able to look at each other, talk to each other, hug each other. We are just grateful because there are many other scenarios. Kerry could have died right in front of me on that plane,” he said.
Ms Khoo’s family has also had a bumpy road ahead. Doctors had advised Ms Saw to undergo surgery but warned of the risks to her unborn child.
“At one point, a doctor asked her if she was ready to lose the child… My sister-in-law was hysterical,” Ms Khoo said. But the 33-year-old ultimately decided to move forward and has made a good recovery.
Five members of Ms Khoo’s family will remain in hospital for some time, including an elderly uncle who said he was learning to walk again, “like a baby”.
“My brother still cannot walk well and needs a wheelchair to get around the hospital,” Ms Khoo said.
Her brother’s friend, who suffered the most debilitating injuries and wears a neck brace and neck brace, will be tied to his bed for some time, she adds.
“We dare not wonder to what extent these injuries are permanent. It’s really difficult for doctors to give a definitive answer,” says Ms Khoo. “Even when they are finally able to go home, it will probably be months before they fully heal physically and emotionally.”
It was late Friday, Ms Khoo said, that she finally managed to sit down for a real meal – since arriving in Bangkok last Wednesday.
“I finally regained some time and appetite after seeing that they are gradually recovering and that the operations went well.”
News Source : www.bbc.com
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