A Number of Hurt as In-Flight Disturbance Hits Delta Flight Arriving in Sydney, Australia

Several people sustained injuries when a Delta Airlines aircraft traveling from LA to Sydney experienced significant turbulence Friday morning.

Flight DL41 "encountered brief turbulence" as it landed at Sydney Airport, a company official informed. Several cabin crew members required medical attention.

Emergency medical services stated they assessed a total of five people, and transferred three of them to a medical facility with non-life-threatening injuries that comprised back pain and head pain. The injured spanned from their thirties and seventies.

The event represents the latest incident of aircraft encountering severe turbulence, with aviation specialists indicating that global warming is a major factor.

The aircraft was carrying 245 people and 15 crew members on the aircraft, the representative said, adding that the plane arrived "without further incident" at Sydney Airport at shortly before 7 a.m. on the day in question.

Emergency responders reported they received a call just only 180 seconds ahead of the plane arrived, and ambulances were ready and waiting at the airport.

The reasons turbulence is growing increasingly prevalent - and more severe.

Last year, twenty-five passengers and crew were injured when a separate Delta aircraft, flying from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, Netherlands, hit "significant" rough air just two hours into the long-haul flight, and diverted for an emergency landing.

Recently, passengers and crew on a Singapore Airlines flight went through a terrifying five seconds bout of severe turbulence. One passenger lost their life and numerous people sustained injuries, as those without seatbelts rose out of their seats and crashed back down.

Turbulence is fairly routine while flying, and while occurrences of significant turbulence seem to be rising, they are still very rare.

Research indicates that there are approximately five thousand cases of severe-or-greater turbulence each year, out of a overall number of more than 35 million flights that are conducted around the world.

Severe turbulence is described as when the up and down movements of a aircraft passing through unstable air exert greater than 1.5g-force on your body - sufficient force to propel you from your seat if you did not have on a seatbelt.

As a changing climate alters weather patterns, experts warn that air travel could become less smooth: shifts in temperature and shifting wind patterns in the upper atmosphere are projected to heighten the regularity and severity of dangerous in-flight bumps.