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A passenger has told of her terrifying ordeal on board a flight that was hit by turbulence so severe that it left six people hospitalised and a seat soaked in the blood of an injured passenger.
SarahJayne Edwards, 39, was on board a Thai Airways flight from Jakarta to Bangkok on Monday when it hit severe turbulence above Singapore – an experience so scary that she even began penning a letter to her husband ‘in case something happened’.
Pictures that emerged of the aftermath show a seat covered in blood from a passenger who suffered a ‘nasty gash’ and the aisle cluttered with cushions, food and rubbish.
Edwards, who was travelling with her daughter, AsiaLilly, emailed MailOnline Travel part of the note that she had frantically begun scribbling to her husband, Alan.
It read: ‘That was THE most scariest flight of my life! Two hours in and we had awful turbulence and no notice. We went up and down several times, everything went flying to the roof. Ppl cut their heads, it was sooooo frightening!
‘I grabbed AsiaLilly and cuddled her and told her we had hit a raincloud so it was going to feel like a rollercoaster. Broke my heart when she said “mummy I’m scared!”‘
The Brit, originally from Tooting, south London, and who works between Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, said that she witnessed the chilling sight of one of the cabin’s seats covered in the blood of the injured passenger.
She said: ‘Yes, it was blood [on the seat]. The man looked like an Indian guy and he had a nasty gash to his head. There were several calls for a doctor to make themselves known to the crew if there was one.’
Thai news site Khaosod reported that the passenger was injured as he was not wearing his seatbelt and was ‘flown into the air and hit his head’.
A photo of the blood-stained seat he was sitting in was taken by a member of the cabin crew, Kru P’Birth, and uploaded to his Facebook page.
Five cabin crew members were also injured when the Boeing 777, which had 72 passengers and 12 crew members on board, hit the turbulence.
Thai Airways President Charamporn Jotikasthira said: ‘The company apologizes to passengers who were involved in the incident.
‘The company has paid the cost of medical treatment for passengers and staff injured.
‘All those who were hurt on the aircraft have returned home from hospital.’
Edwards added: ‘I travel this route several times a month. There was no warning or bad weather so the seat belt signs were not on.’
Speaking to MailOnline previously about what happens to the aircraft during an episode of turbulence, Patrick Smith, an active airline pilot and author said: ‘During turbulence, the pilots are not fighting the controls.
‘Planes are designed with what we call positive stability, meaning that when nudged from their original point in space, by their nature they wish to return there.
‘The best way of handling rough air is to effectively ride it out, hands-off. (Some autopilots have a turbulence mode that desensitizes the system, to avoid over-controlling.)
‘It can be uncomfortable, but the jet is not going to flip upside down.’
‘For what it’s worth, thinking back over the whole history of modern commercial aviation, I cannot recall a single jetliner crash caused by turbulence, strictly speaking.
‘Airplanes are engineered to withstand an extreme amount of stress, and the amount of turbulence required to, for instance, tear off a wing, is far beyond anything you’ll ever experience.’
Source: mailonline
