United Airlines Flight to Singapore Hit By Severe Turbulence, Five Injured, Including One Seriously

A United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Singapore was rocked by severe turbulence as it flew over the Philipines last month, leaving one flight attendant seriously injured, and four other people with minor injuries.

What Happened?

United flight UA1 from San Francisco International Airport to Singapore on March 27, 2025, was flying at around 40,000 feet over Bhutan City in the Philipines when the severe turbulence suddenly struck.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there were 174 passengers onboard the nine-year-old Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and one of those passengers sustained a minor injury in the incident.

Along with the seriously injured flight attendant, three others sustained less serious injuries.

The pilots decided to continue flying to Singapore where the plane landed safely around three hours later. According to flight tracking data supplied by Flight Radar 24, the aircraft then remained on the ground in Singapore for nearly nine days before flying back to San Francisco on April 5.

Although the incident occurred last month, it is only now coming to light after the FAA officially reported the accident. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is assisting the Philippines Civil Aviation Authority in its investigation of the incident.

A Troubled Aircraft?

The aircraft (registration: N27958) was also involved in another serious incident last September during a flight from Los Angeles to London Heathrow when a flight computer display on the Captain’s side of the cockpit suddenly went blank as the plane was flying over Hudson’s Bay, Canada.

At the same time, the flight management computer went into an emergency ‘degraded mode’ and the pilots declared a ‘Mayday’ decided to divert to Chicago O’Hare so that the systems would be checked out by United’s maintenance team.

The same plane left a flight attendant with a broken ankle during a severe turbulence incident in November 2015 when it was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Houston.

The flight attendant was standing in the back galley of the aircraft when she was lifted off her feet due to the turbulence. As she fell to the floor, she sustained a fractured ankle and had to be rushed to hospital.

In 2017, another flight attendant was left with a serious injury onboard the same plane when it encountered severe clear air turbulence while flying over the South China Sea during a flight from Singapore to San Francisco.

A passenger onboard the flight said the plane was rocked by turbulence on two occasions and the second time took everyone by surprise. The injury sustained by the flight attendant was so serious that the pilots made an emergency medical diversion to Tokyo.