A Number of Affected as Rough Air Impacts Delta Aircraft Landing at Sydney

Multiple passengers and crew were hurt after a Delta flight from Los Angeles to Sydney encountered rough air on Friday morning.

Delta Flight 41 "encountered brief turbulence" as it made its approach and landed at the Sydney airport, a company official informed. A number of the onboard staff required medical attention.

Emergency medical services reported they treated a total of five people, and took three of them to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries that comprised back pain and migraines. The patients' ages were between their 30s to 70s.

It is the newest example of commercial jets being hit by turbulence, with researchers pointing out that shifting climate patterns is a key driver.

On board were 245 passengers and 15 crew members on the aircraft, the official added, clarifying that the plane touched down "safely and normally" at Sydney Airport at 6:48 a.m. local time on Friday morning.

Paramedics indicated they received a call just three minutes prior to the plane landed, and response teams were standing by on the runway.

Why plane turbulence is becoming increasingly prevalent - and more severe.

Last year, twenty-five passengers and crew sustained injuries when a Delta Airlines flight, travelling from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam, encountered "considerable" rough air just a couple of hours into the lengthy trip, and had to make an precautionary landing.

Earlier this year, passengers and crew on a Singapore Airlines flight went through a terrifying five seconds of severe turbulence. An individual passed away and dozens were injured, as unbelted passengers lifted out of their seats and were slammed back.

Turbulence is fairly routine on aircraft journeys, and while cases of significant turbulence seem to be rising, they are still very rare.

Estimates show that there are around thousands of instances of severe-or-greater turbulence each year, out of a total of over 35 million journeys that currently occur around the world.

Severe turbulence is described as when the up and down movements of a jet going through disturbed air generate more than 1.5 times the force of gravity on your body - a strong enough force to throw you from your seat if you did not have on a seatbelt.

As climate change modifies atmospheric conditions, specialists caution that commercial aviation could become less smooth: shifts in temperature and shifting wind patterns in the upper atmosphere are expected to heighten the frequency and intensity of dangerous in-flight bumps.