Several Affected as Rough Air Strikes A Delta Airlines Aircraft into Sydney, Australia

A number of individuals were hurt after a Delta Airlines aircraft traveling from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia experienced rough air this past Friday.

Flight DL41 "encountered brief turbulence" as it made its approach and landed at the Sydney airport, a representative for the carrier stated. Several cabin crew members required medical attention.

Emergency medical services reported they assessed a total of five people, and took a trio to a medical facility with relatively minor issues that comprised pain in the back and headaches. Those affected spanned from their thirties and seventies.

The event represents the latest incident of commercial jets encountering atmospheric disturbance, with researchers indicating that climate change is a key driver.

The aircraft was carrying 245 people and a crew of 15 on the Airbus A350, the Delta spokesperson added, adding that the plane landed "safely and normally" at Sydney Airport at shortly before 7 a.m. on the day in question.

Emergency responders reported they were alerted just three minutes before the plane touched down, and emergency vehicles were standing by on the runway.

Why in-flight bumpiness is getting more common - and often stronger.

In the previous year, two dozen individuals were hurt when a Delta Airlines flight, flying from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, Netherlands, experienced "severe" rough air just two hours into the long-haul flight, and was forced to make an precautionary landing.

Earlier this year, passengers and crew on a certain international flight experienced a frightening short but intense period of extreme instability. One passenger died and dozens were injured, as those without seatbelts rose out of their seats and fell back down.

Turbulence is fairly routine during flights, and while cases of strong or severe turbulence seem to be rising, they are statistically infrequent.

Data suggests that there are an estimated thousands of instances of severe-or-greater turbulence annually, out of a overall number of more than 35 million aircraft departures that now take off globally.

Intense turbulence is defined as when the up and down movements of a plane experiencing unstable air generate in excess of 1.5g-force on your body - sufficient force to throw you from your seat if you did not have on a seatbelt.

As a changing climate shifts weather patterns, researchers alert that flying could become more turbulent: warming trends and changing jet streams in the jet stream level are likely to boost the frequency and intensity of severe turbulence.