Several Injured as In-Flight Disturbance Strikes Delta Plane Landing at Sydney, Australia

A number of individuals were hurt when a Delta jet from LA to Sydney, Australia encountered turbulence on Friday morning.

Delta Flight 41 "experienced a brief period of turbulence" as it touched down at the Sydney airport, a company official informed. Several cabin crew members sustained injuries.

The New South Wales Ambulance Service said they assessed five individuals, and took three to a medical facility with non-life-threatening injuries that comprised pain in the back and headaches. The patients' ages were between their 30s to 70s.

This marks the latest incident of aircraft being hit by turbulence, with researchers indicating that global warming is a key driver.

The aircraft was carrying 245 people and a crew of 15 on the aircraft, the representative added, adding that the plane landed "safely" at the airport at 06:48 local time on Friday morning.

Paramedics said they received a call just three minutes prior to the plane landed, and emergency vehicles were standing by on the runway.

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

Last year, two dozen individuals sustained injuries when a separate Delta aircraft, on a route from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, hit "significant" turbulence just two hours into the long-haul flight, and was forced to make an emergency landing.

Recently, those on board on a Singapore Airlines flight endured a terrifying brief five-second bout of severe turbulence. An individual lost their life and dozens were injured, as individuals not fastened in lifted out of their seats and were slammed back.

In-flight turbulence is fairly routine during flights, and while instances of rough conditions appear to be increasing, they are still very rare.

Data suggests that there are approximately five thousand cases of severe or worse turbulence annually, out of a total of more than 35 million flights that currently occur worldwide.

Severe turbulence is described as when the sudden jolts of a aircraft passing through unstable air exert more than a significant G-force on your body - a strong enough force to propel you from your seat if you weren't wearing a safety belt.

As climate change shifts atmospheric conditions, researchers alert that flying could become more turbulent: shifts in temperature and changing jet streams in the higher altitudes are expected to heighten the frequency and intensity of significant turbulence.