Several Affected as Turbulence Hits Delta Plane Landing at Sydney, Australia

Several people have been injured after a Delta Airlines flight from LA to Sydney, Australia experienced turbulence this past Friday.

Delta Flight 41 "encountered brief turbulence" as it made its approach and landed at Sydney Airport, an airline spokesperson informed. Several cabin crew members required medical attention.

The New South Wales Ambulance Service said they assessed five patients, and took a trio to a medical facility with relatively minor issues that included back pain and headaches. Those affected were between their thirties and seventies.

This marks the latest incident of commercial jets being hit by atmospheric disturbance, with aviation specialists saying that global warming is a significant contributor.

There were nearly 250 travelers and 15 crew members on the Airbus A350, the Delta spokesperson said, adding that the plane landed "without further incident" at the airport at 6:48 a.m. local time on Friday morning.

The NSW Ambulance Service said they were alerted just only 180 seconds ahead of the plane arrived, and ambulances were standing by on the runway.

Why plane turbulence is becoming increasingly prevalent - and potentially more dangerous.

In the previous year, twenty-five passengers and crew were injured when a separate Delta aircraft, on a route from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam, Netherlands, encountered "severe" atmospheric disturbance just 120 minutes into the transoceanic journey, and was forced to make an emergency landing.

Recently, those on board on a Singapore Airlines jet went through a frightening brief five-second period of extreme instability. One passenger passed away and dozens were injured, as unbelted passengers were thrown from their seats and fell back down.

Turbulence is a common occurrence while flying, and while instances of significant turbulence are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are statistically infrequent.

Data suggests that there are approximately thousands of instances of severe-or-greater turbulence annually, out of a sum of in excess of 35 million journeys that are conducted around the world.

Severe turbulence is described as when the sudden jolts of a jet passing through unstable air generate greater than 1.5 times the force of gravity on your body - a strong enough force to throw you from your seat if you did not have on a safety belt.

As a changing climate modifies the conditions in the sky, specialists caution that air travel could become bumpier: temperature changes and shifting wind patterns in the jet stream level are projected to heighten the occurrence and strength of severe turbulence.