Most of passengers from battered Singapore Airlines jetliner arrive in Singapore from Bangkok

BANGKOK (AP) — Singapore Airlines said a relief plane flew into Singapore early Wednesday morning with most of the passengers who were on a flight that was battered by severe turbulence over the Indian Ocean and had to make an emergency landing in Bangkok after one man died and dozens of people were injured.

The airline said 143 passengers arrived in the city state shortly after 5 a.m.

The airline’s CEO, Goh Choon Phong, said an additional 79 passengers and six crew members remained in Bangkok, including the 71 hospitalized as of Wednesday morning. The airline told The Associated Press that a second relief flight was planned.

The airline’s Flight SQ321 was flying from London’s Heathrow airport to Singapore, with 211 passengers and 18 crew members aboard, when it hit the turbulence Tuesday, bashing people around inside the plane. The Boeing 777 descended 6,000 feet (around 1,800 meters) in about three minutes, the carrier said Tuesday.

“We are very sorry for the traumatic experience that everyone on board SQ321 went through,” Goh said in a video on social media. He said the airline was providing all necessary support and pledged it would fully cooperate in investigations.

An airport official said the 73-year-old British man who died might have had a heart attack, though that hadn’t been confirmed.

Thai officials withheld the man’s name, but British media identified him as Geoff Kitchen, who was going on a holiday with his wife. She was among the passengers taken to hospital in Bangkok

Kitchen was described as formerly working in the insurance industry, and in retirement continuing his involvement with amateur theater.

The Thornbury Musical Theatre Group, with which he worked, said he was “always a gentleman with the utmost