A Number of Injured as Rough Air Hits A Delta Airlines Plane Arriving in Sydney

Several people have been injured when a Delta jet originating in Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia was hit by turbulence on Friday morning.

Delta Flight 41 "went through a short bout of rough air" as it touched down at the Sydney airport, a representative for the carrier told. A number of the onboard staff sustained injuries.

Emergency medical services reported they treated a total of five people, and transferred three of them to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries that comprised spinal discomfort and migraines. Those affected spanned from their 30s up to the 70s.

This marks the newest example of planes encountering turbulence, with experts saying that shifting climate patterns is a major factor.

On board were 245 passengers and 15 crew members on the Airbus A350, the representative noted, adding that the plane touched down "safely and normally" at Sydney Airport at shortly before 7 a.m. on Friday morning.

The NSW Ambulance Service indicated they were alerted just a mere three minutes before the plane landed, and response teams were waiting on the tarmac.

The reasons turbulence is growing more frequent - and potentially more dangerous.

During the past year, twenty-five passengers and crew sustained injuries when a Delta Airlines flight, flying from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, experienced "considerable" turbulence just two hours into the long-haul flight, and diverted for an unscheduled landing.

Recently, travelers and staff on a Singapore Airlines flight went through a terrifying short but intense of severe turbulence. An individual lost their life and many were hurt, as individuals not fastened in lifted out of their seats and crashed back down.

In-flight turbulence is fairly routine during flights, and while cases of rough conditions seem to be rising, they are still very rare.

Estimates show that there are approximately 5,000 incidents of significant in-flight disturbance annually, out of a overall number of in excess of 35 million flights that now take off around the world.

Severe turbulence is described as when the sudden jolts of a plane passing through unstable air apply greater than 1.5g-force on your body - a strong enough force to lift you out of your seat if you did not have on a restraint.

As climate change shifts weather patterns, specialists caution that air travel could become bumpier: temperature changes and altered air currents in the jet stream level are projected to increase the occurrence and strength of severe turbulence.