Several Affected as Turbulence Strikes Delta Aircraft Landing at Sydney

Multiple passengers and crew were hurt when a Delta Airlines aircraft traveling from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia experienced turbulence Friday morning.

Flight DL41 "experienced a brief period of turbulence" as it touched down at the Sydney airport, a company official stated. Several cabin crew members were injured.

The New South Wales Ambulance Service said they assessed five individuals, and transported three to hospital with relatively minor issues that included back pain and head pain. Those affected were between their 30s to 70s.

This marks the newest example of planes being hit by turbulence, with experts saying that shifting climate patterns is a key driver.

On board were 245 passengers and a crew of 15 on the aircraft, the representative said, adding that the plane landed "safely" at the airport at 06:48 local time on Friday morning.

Paramedics said they received a call just only 180 seconds ahead of the plane arrived, and emergency vehicles were waiting on the tarmac.

Why in-flight bumpiness is growing increasingly prevalent - and potentially more dangerous.

During the past year, 25 people were injured when a separate Delta aircraft, on a route from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, Netherlands, encountered "severe" turbulence just a couple of hours into the long-haul flight, and diverted for an unscheduled landing.

Recently, passengers and crew on a Singapore Airlines jet experienced a terrifying short but intense period of extreme instability. An individual lost their life and numerous people sustained injuries, as individuals not fastened in rose out of their seats and fell back down.

Bumpy air is not uncommon on aircraft journeys, and while occurrences of strong or severe turbulence are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are statistically infrequent.

Research indicates that there are an estimated 5,000 incidents of severe or worse turbulence annually, out of a total of in excess of 35 million journeys that now take off globally.

Severe turbulence is described as when the vertical motions of a jet passing through disturbed air apply more than 1.5 times the force of gravity on your body - a strong enough force to propel you from your seat if you were not fastened by a seatbelt.

As global warming shifts the conditions in the sky, specialists caution that commercial aviation could become more turbulent: temperature changes and shifting wind patterns in the jet stream level are expected to increase the regularity and severity of significant turbulence.