[Tee tiong huat]

Singapore Airlines said the flight encountered sudden extreme turbulence over the Irrawaddy Basin at 37,000 feet about 10 hours after departure.

The pilot declared an emergency and diverted the aircraft to Bangkok, where it landed at 3.45pm local time

There was little warning of the chaos that was about to hit passengers on Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 on Tuesday (May 21).


With around three hours left on the journey from London to Singapore, Malaysian student Dzafran Azmir got the feeling that the Boeing 777-300R plane was tilting upwards and beginning to shake.

The 28-year-old braced himself and checked that he had his seatbelt on. He did. Many of the other passengers did not, he said.

"Suddenly there was a very dramatic drop so everyone seated and not wearing a seatbelt was launched immediately into the ceiling, 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," Azmir told Reuters.

"People dropped to the ground, my phone flew out of my hand and went a couple aisles to the side, people's shoes flung about."