SINGAPORE — More than 140 passengers and crew from a Singapore Airlines flight hit by heavy turbulence that left dozens injured and one dead finally reached Singapore on a relief flight Wednesday morning after an emergency landing in Bangkok.

The scheduled London-Singapore flight on a Boeing 777-300ER plane was diverted to Bangkok after it was buffeted by turbulence that flung passengers and crew around the cabin, slamming some into the ceiling.

A 73-year-old British passenger died of a suspected heart attack, and at least 30 people were injured.

“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 28-year-old student on board the flight, told Reuters after arriving in Singapore.

Photographs from the interior of the plane showed gashes in the overhead cabin panels, oxygen masks and panels hanging from the ceiling and luggage strewn around. A passenger said some people’s heads had slammed into the lights above the seats and broken the panels.

Singapore Airlines took 131 passengers and 12 crew on the relief flight from Bangkok, which reached Singapore just before 5 a.m. (9 p.m. GMT). There were 211 passengers including many Australians, British and Singaporeans, and 18 crew onboard 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 Chief Executive Officer Goh Choon Phong said in a video message.

Officers from Singapore’s Transport Safety Investigation Bureau arrived in Bangkok on Tuesday night, Singapore’s Transport Minister Chee Hong Tat said in a statement on Facebook.

As the incident involves a US company, Boeing, which makes the 777-300ER aircraft, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was sending an accredited representative and four technical advisers to support the investigation, he said.

The plane encountered sudden extreme turbulence, Mr. Goh said, and the pilot then declared a medical emergency and diverted to Bangkok.

Aircraft tracking provider FlightRadar 24 said at 7:49 a.m. GMT the flight encountered “a rapid change in vertical rate, consistent with a sudden turbulence event,” based on flight tracking data.

“There were thunderstorms, some severe, in the area at the time,” it said.

Weather forecasting service AccuWeather on Tuesday said rapidly developing, explosive thunderstorms near the flight path of Flight 321 most likely contributed to violent turbulence.

“Developing thunderstorms often have strong updrafts, a zone of upward moving air, that rises very rapidly, sometimes at more than 100 mph, and can leave pilots will little time to react if it occurs directly in front of the plane,” said Dan DePodwin, AccuWeather’s Senior Director of Forecasting Operations.

The sudden turbulence occurred over the Irrawaddy Basin in Myanmar, about 10 hours into the flight, Singapore Airlines said.

“It is not a rare occurrence for big thunderstorms in the Bay of Bengal. There are always the chances of bumps,” said an airline pilot who regularly flies to Singapore and Southeast Asia. The pilot declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

“We were about 30 miles off track flying around the thunderstorms two days ago on the way to Singapore,” the pilot added.

Turbulence has many causes, most obviously the unstable weather patterns that trigger storms, but this flight could have been affected by clear air turbulence, which is difficult to detect.

Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, representing over 50,000 workers at 20 airlines, said it is important for passengers to wear seatbelts whenever seated, she said.

“It is a matter of life and death,” Ms. Nelson said.

Turbulence-related airline accidents are the most common type of accident, according to a 2021 NTSB study.

Although the airline said 30 people were injured, Samitivej Hospital in Thailand said it was treating 71 passengers.

From 2009 through 2018, the US agency found that turbulence accounted for more than a third of reported airline accidents and most resulted in one or more serious injuries, but no aircraft damage.

Singapore Airlines, which is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading airlines and is seen as a benchmark for much of the industry, has not had any major incidents in recent years.

Its last accident resulting in casualties was a flight from Singapore to Los Angeles via Taipei, where it crashed on Oct. 31, 2000 at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, killing 83 of the 179 people on board.

Singapore Airlines shares were not trading on Wednesday because of a public holiday in Singapore. — Reuters

A POWERFUL TORNADO ripped through a small Iowa town on Tuesday, killing multiple people and leaving at least a dozen injured, authorities said.

Images from the town of Greenfield show a path of utter destruction, with homes reduced to splinters, debris strewn everywhere and several large wind turbines toppled.

“This tornado has devastated a good portion of this town,” said Sgt. Alex Dinkla, a spokesperson with the Iowa State Patrol, during an evening press conference in Greenfield.

“We can confirm there have been multiple fatalities with this tornado.”

Mr. Dinkla did not provide a death toll, but said it may not be before Wednesday that figures could be provided.

At least a dozen people in Greenfield, a town of about 2,000 people, were injured in the twister, Mr. Dinkla said. Because the local hospital sustained damage in the storm, those people had to be transferred to facilities in nearby towns.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said she would visit Greenfield on Wednesday morning. “While it’s too soon to know the storm’s full impact, answers will come in the hours and days ahead,” Ms. Reynolds said in a statement.

The governor said the state would provide its full resources to help the impacted areas recover, and reassured residents that support was in place working to provide shelter, food and water, and restore power to thousands of residents.

“I’ve lived here all my life. I’m just praying that everyone was safe, that everybody’s safe, and nobody got hurt,” Valerie Warrior, a Greenfield resident, told CBS affiliate KCCI TV in an interview, standing near some of the demolished dwellings. “It was scary, very scary.”

Other videos showed smashed vehicles and heavy damage to a gasoline station in Greenfield, the county seat of Adair County, which along with adjacent Adams County appeared to have borne the brunt of the Iowa storms in the southwestern corner of the state.

At least one person, a woman in Adams County, was listed as a storm-related fatality, the county’s medical examiner Lisa Brown said. She spoke to Reuters by phone but said she could not yet provide more details.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds declared a “disaster emergency” for 15 counties, including Adair and Adams, allowing state resources to be readily utilized in responding to the storm.

Also in Adams County, at least three wind turbines standing about 25 stories high were nearly snapped in half, with one catching fire, KCCI reported. It said several other wind turbines were damaged in Adair County.

The National Weather Service had issued tornado warnings and severe thunderstorm advisories for much of Iowa and several other Midwestern states on Tuesday, including parts of Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

Earlier in the day, the weather service confirmed at least one tornado over Rollingstone, Minnesota. — Reuters

HANOI — Vietnam’s parliament elected police minister To Lam as the state president on Wednesday, in a move analysts see as a “stepping stone” for Mr. Lam to bid later for the position of chief of the ruling Communist Party, the country’s top job.

Mr. Lam’s election followed the appointment on Monday by Vietnam’s National Assembly of its new chairman, former deputy Tran Thanh Man, possibly bringing to a temporary end two-months of heightened political turbulence which saw the exit of three of Vietnam’s top five leaders over unspecified wrongdoings.

In line with normal procedures in the tightly controlled one-party state, lawmakers voted unanimously on a resolution that approved Mr. Lam’s election after a secret ballot about him, the only candidate for the job. That followed his nomination by the Communist Party last week. 

As head of the public security ministry, Mr. Lam, 66, has been a crucial figure in a sweeping anti-graft campaign, known as “blazing furnace,” which is aimed at rooting out widespread corruption but has also been seen by critics as a tool to sideline opponents during political infighting.

That in turn is denting the country’s appeal among foreign investors, who mostly reduced their securities holdings in recent months in coincidence with bad political news. It is also paralyzing the public administration, with billions of dollars in foreign aid and public funds unspent.

After his election, Mr. Lam told lawmakers he would “resolutely and persistently continue the fight against corruption.”

The state president holds a largely ceremonial role but is one of the country’s top four political positions, the so-called ‘four pillars.’ The others are the party chief, the prime minister and the parliament speaker.

Political infighting is expected to temporarily abate after Mr. Lam’s election, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor and Vietnam expert at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra.

But the crucial battle remains to be fought, as the ageing party chief Nguyen Phu Trong’s third five-year term ends in 2026 — or earlier if he steps down before his mandate expires.

“To Lam could use his position as one of the ‘four pillars’ as a stepping stone to become general secretary,” said Mr. Thayer, referring to the party chief job.

“With the elevation to the office of president, it becomes clear that there are more ambitions for To Lam than retirement,” said Florian Feyerabend, the representative in Vietnam for Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a think tank, noting the position could be a “launch pad” to win the party chief job.

Until that crucial position is filled, Florian Feyerabend expected continued infighting, which he defined as “the modus operandi of the system.”

The parliament on Wednesday also voted to dismiss Mr. Lam from his post as police minister, according to state media, a move not originally in its schedule.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has assigned Deputy Minister of Public Security Tran Quoc To, 62, to temporarily head the ministry, online newspaper VietnamNet cited a government decision as saying.

GOLD STEAK
Mr. Lam’s rise has not been without controversy.

In 2021, celebrity chef Nusret Gokce, known as “Salt Bae,” uploaded a video of himself feeding Mr. Lam a gold encrusted steak at his London restaurant, while Vietnam was under COVID-19 lockdown. The video went viral before the Turkish chef removed it.

A noodle vendor who later posted a video imitating “Salt Bae” was sentenced to five years in prison for “anti-state propaganda”.

Mr. Lam was the head of the public security ministry when in 2017 Vietnam’s security services allegedly carried out an extraordinary rendition of a Vietnamese business executive from Germany through Slovakia. The case rattled relations with both countries.

The US State Department’s report on human rights in Vietnam in 2023, warned of significant violations by security forces and cited “credible reports that members of the security forces committed numerous abuses.” — Reuters