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Singapore Airlines passenger says it was chaos as “extreme turbulence” hit flight with no warning
London — A passenger who was on the Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 when it hit severe turbulence on Tuesday, leaving one passenger dead and dozens injured, has described “horrifying” scenes on board the Boeing 777 as it hit the rough air with virtually no warning. Dzafram Azmir, a 28-year-old student from Malaysia, was travelling from London to Singapore when the plane was hit by what the airline called “extreme turbulence,” dropping about 6,000 feet in the space of just five minutes.
“I’ve been flying all my life since I was a kid. I didn’t know turbulence could cause this level of damage and how much it could hurt people,” Azmir told CBS News on Wednesday. He described the ordeal as “quick and unanticipated” as the plane hit the turbulence around the time of a meal service.
“There was screaming, yelling and gasping,” Azmir said. “People who weren’t buckled down in their seats were thrown up off of their chairs, flung to the ceiling of the cabin and then immediately thrown back down, to their seats or the flooring.”
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In a statement, the airline said the plane encountered the turbulence over the Indian Ocean at 37,000 feet, about 10 hours after departure. The flight was then diverted to Bangkok after the pilot declared a medical emergency.
An official with the Bangkok airport said Tuesday that the man who died, who was identified as a 73-year-old British passenger, was believed to have suffered a heart attack during the turbulence. In a post on Facebook, the carrier offered its condolences to the family of the man who died and later apologized “for the traumatic experience that our passengers and crew members suffered.”
Azmir said he counted himself lucky to have come out of the incident unscathed, which he credited to having his seatbelt on at the time. Passengers have said the seatbelt light came on right before the plane hit the turbulence, but Azmir said there was no warning, which he believes contributed to the extent of the damage and injuries.
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He said his experience “pales in comparison to some more tragic things that happened to other passengers,” but that the incident had left him fearing turbulence.
A relief flight carrying 143 of the passengers and crew members arrived in Singapore on early Wednesday morning, according to the airline. At least 30 peopled were injured on the Tuesday flight, according to Thai officials, including some who were left in critical condition.
The Reuters news agency said Wednesday that 20 passengers were in intensive care, nine had undergone surgery, and five others were awaiting surgery at Bangkok’s Samitivej Hospital.
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Sen. Mark Kelly says feds need to do a “better job” of letting Americans know “there’s a huge amount of misinformation” on election
Washington — Sen. Mark Kelly said Sunday that the federal government needs to do its part to inform Americans of the vast swath of election misinformation that’s being consumed on social media platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
“It’s up to us, the people who serve in Congress and in the White House to get the information out there, that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation in this election, and it’s not going to stop on Nov. 5,” Kelly said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
Kelly, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he’s seen these misinformation operations target not only his state of Arizona, but also other battleground states.
“There is a very reasonable chance I would put it in the 20 to 30% range, that the content you are seeing, the comments you are seeing, are coming from one of those three countries: Russia, Iran, China,” Kelly said.
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In a committee hearing last month on foreign threats to the 2024 election, Kelly presented screenshots of Russian-made web pages showing fabricated headlines designed to look like Fox News and The Washington Post, targeted at voters in battleground states.
“So my constituents in Arizona and others — they seek to influence the outcome of these elections, and that is absolutely beyond the pale,” Kelly said at the Sept. 18 hearing. “We’ve got to do something about it.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump each have the support of 49% of Arizona voters, according to CBS News’ battleground tracker as of Sept. 30.
In another battleground state, Pennsylvania, Trump returned Saturday to hold a rally in Butler three months after an attempted assassination on him. He was joined by members of his own party and billionaire Elon Musk, who said Trump was the only way to preserve democracy and warned of a last election if he does not win in November.
Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Kelly called the social media mogul a hypocrite.
“He’s standing next to the guy that tried to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6, saying that this is somehow going to be the last election and they’re going to take away your vote,” Kelly said. “And you know, it just doesn’t pass the logic test.”
At the White House press briefing on Friday, President Biden – speaking from the podium for the first time since taking office – said he’s confident of a free and fair election but alluded to the 2021 insurrection at the Capitol in his concerns on whether it will be a peaceful transfer of power.
“The things that Trump has said and the things that he said last time out when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous,” Mr. Biden said. “If you notice, I noticed that the vice-presidential Republican candidate did not say he’d accept the outcome of the election, and they haven’t even accepted the outcome of the last election.”
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