A Number of Injured as Turbulence Hits Delta Flight Landing at Sydney, Australia

A number of individuals have been injured after a Delta jet from LA to Sydney, Australia was hit by turbulence on Friday morning.

Flight DL41 "experienced a brief period of turbulence" as it touched down at the Sydney airport, a company official informed. A number of the onboard staff were injured.

The New South Wales Ambulance Service reported they assessed a total of five people, and transferred a trio to a medical facility with relatively minor issues that included pain in the back and head pain. The injured spanned from their thirties and seventies.

It is the latest incident of commercial jets experiencing atmospheric disturbance, with experts pointing out that climate change is a key driver.

The aircraft was carrying 245 passengers and a crew of 15 on the wide-body jet, the official noted, adding that the plane arrived "safely" at the airport at shortly before 7 a.m. on the day in question.

Paramedics indicated they got a call just only 180 seconds before the plane arrived, and emergency vehicles were standing by on the runway.

Why in-flight bumpiness is becoming more common - and often stronger.

In the previous year, twenty-five passengers and crew were hurt when a Delta Airlines flight, travelling from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, experienced "severe" turbulence just two hours into the transoceanic journey, and had to make an emergency landing.

Earlier this year, travelers and staff on a Singapore Airlines flight endured a frightening five seconds of severe turbulence. One passenger passed away and numerous people sustained injuries, as those without seatbelts rose out of their seats and fell back down.

Turbulence is a common occurrence during flights, and while occurrences of strong or severe turbulence are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are still very rare.

Estimates show that there are an estimated 5,000 incidents of significant in-flight disturbance each year, out of a total of more than 35 million aircraft departures that currently occur around the world.

Strong atmospheric disturbance is described as when the vertical motions of a plane passing through unstable air generate more than 1.5 times the force of gravity on your body - enough to throw you from your seat if you did not have on a seatbelt.

As a changing climate shifts weather patterns, specialists caution that air travel could become more turbulent: warming trends and shifting wind patterns in the jet stream level are expected to increase the regularity and severity of significant turbulence.