'I really wanted to live'

SQ321 passenger who fractured spine gets back on her feet

- Lok Jian Wen

For more than 10 weeks, she was bedridden in a Bangkok hospital, her spine fractured.She was lucky to escape paralysis, her doctors told her.

Today, Malaysian undergraduate Hong Mun Ying, who was a passenger on the turbulence-hit SQ321 flight in May, is back home in Malaysia and slowly but surely on the road to recovery.

Getting on the flight out of Bangkok in August was tough. She was filled with anxiety, amid intermittent flashbacks of the incident that led to her fracturing her spine.

Ms Hong had been aboard the ill-fated Singapore Airlines (SIA) flight that was scheduled to fly from London to Singapore on May 21 but was diverted to Bangkok after it encountered extreme turbulence over the Irrawaddy Basin in Myanmar.

The incident, which caused the plane to plummet over 54m in 4.6 seconds, led to one passenger dying of a suspected heart attack and dozens of others being injured.

Ms Hong was one of those seriously injured, fracturing the fifth and sixth thoracic vertebrae in her spine. She also struck her head on the overhead luggage compartment and needed stitches on her scalp.

The 23-year-old spent over 10 weeks recovering in Bangkok's Samitivej Srinakarin Hospital and was one of the last few passengers on that flight to be discharged.

After her discharge, she had to psych herself up to brave the two-hour flight home to Malaysia.

Despite suffering panic attacks whenever loud noises or sudden movements made her relive the trauma she suffered on board SQ321, her accompanying boyfriend and a nurse from the hospital assuaged her sufficiently to board the Thai Airways plane in a back brace.

She was also armed with self-calming techniques she learnt from hospital psychiatrists, like thinking about comforting memories with her family or hugging herself.

Today, she is simply grateful, to the hospital staff who cared for her through her surgery and recovery, and for surviving the incident.