Multiple Injured as In-Flight Disturbance Strikes Delta Aircraft into Sydney, Australia

Multiple passengers and crew were hurt when a Delta Airlines flight traveling from Los Angeles to Sydney encountered significant turbulence on Friday morning.

Delta Flight 41 "went through a short bout of rough air" as it touched down at Sydney Airport, an airline spokesperson stated. Four flight attendants sustained injuries.

Local paramedics stated they evaluated a total of five people, and transferred three of them to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries that comprised pain in the back and headaches. The injured were between their thirties and seventies.

This marks the most recent case of planes experiencing severe turbulence, with aviation specialists saying that global warming is a major factor.

On board were 245 passengers and fifteen staff members on the wide-body jet, the Delta spokesperson noted, clarifying that the plane landed "without further incident" at Sydney Airport at 6:48 a.m. local time on Friday.

Emergency responders said they were alerted just a mere three minutes ahead of the plane touched down, and response teams were standing by on the runway.

Why in-flight bumpiness is becoming more common - and potentially more dangerous.

Last year, 25 people were hurt when a Delta Airlines flight, on a route from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, encountered "considerable" turbulence just 120 minutes into the transoceanic journey, and diverted for an emergency landing.

Recently, passengers and crew on a Singapore Airlines jet experienced a terrifying five seconds bout of severe turbulence. An individual died and many were hurt, as those without seatbelts were thrown from their seats and fell back down.

Turbulence is fairly routine during flights, and while occurrences of strong or severe turbulence are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are statistically infrequent.

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

Strong atmospheric disturbance is defined as when the up and down movements of a plane passing through rough air masses exert greater than a significant G-force on your body - sufficient force to lift you out of your seat if you were not fastened by a safety belt.

As a changing climate shifts weather patterns, experts warn that air travel could become more turbulent: temperature changes and changing jet streams in the jet stream level are likely to increase the occurrence and strength of dangerous in-flight bumps.