By Zach Hope
Bangkok: It is Wednesday evening in Bangkok and a United Nations of banged-up travellers are shuffling the corridors of Samitivej Srinakarin Hospital, the accidental harbour of close to 50 patients from Singapore Airlines flight 321.
All but one of them asks to remain nameless. Some are evidently traumatised. Many are seriously injured. One man limps by in a neck brace, sling and stitches.
Several passengers were injured on a Singapore Airlines flight on Tuesday.Credit: AP
In the lobby, four glassy-eyed but physically unharmed English children are waiting instructions from a minder about seeing their parents. Mum is upstairs with a snapped collarbone and two cracked vertebrae, they explain. Dad has something wrong with his chest.
A Spanish passenger is in a wheelchair pushed by his wife. They are supposed to be on their honeymoon. An Israeli man brings drinks for his 19-year-old daughter. She is supposed to be prepping for exams in Singapore.
South Londoner Josh Silverstone is on his way to meet friends in Bali, a journey he intends to complete.
He remembers the shudder of the plane and the dings of the seatbelt signs. “And then … boom!” It was the sound of bodies, including his own, crashing into the ceiling. The next few seconds are blank.
Josh Silverstone was discharged from a Thai hospital on Wednesday.Credit: Zach Hope
About 10 hours into the journey on Tuesday night (AEST), the plane hit unexpected turbulence over Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Basin, causing it to instantly lose altitude and tossing passengers moving about the aisles or without seatbelts buckled through the cabin.
Geoffrey Kitchen, a 73-year-old British man, died on the plane.
Nine Australians are patients at Srinakarin. Three of them are in intensive care. Another three are receiving treatment at another hospital called Sukhumvit.
The London to Singapore route is common for Australians returning from Europe, and 56 were among the SQ321’s passengers. Most have since made it home.
The husband of one of the more serious Australian cases sits for a time among journalists in the Srinakarin lobby. He is not to be quoted, but neither is he ready to leave for the airline-arranged hotel across the road.
He and his wife were coming home from a holiday. When the plane shuddered and plunged, she was waiting for the toilets. There wasn’t enough time for her to get back to her seat. He doesn’t want to talk about what he saw.
While the aircraft was structurally sound to continue, Kitchen’s death prompted the captain to make an emergency landing in Bangkok.
Silverstone, 24, woke up on the floor of the plane with a chipped front tooth and gashes around his left eye.
A staff member, left, from the British embassy arrives at Samitivej Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand.Credit: AP
“I stood up and turned around and people were on the floor and bleeding,” he says. “Things from the ceiling were falling down. It was very quick.”
He felt OK for the rest of the flight, but on the ground he was vomiting uncontrollably and struggling to walk, the obvious signs of concussion.
We meet him as he is being discharged. His hospital floor was mostly filled with Kiwis, Australians and Britons, he says.
“A lot of people up there have got spinal issues,” he says. “A lot of people can barely move. I’m one of the lucky ones.”
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.