Several Hurt as In-Flight Disturbance Impacts Delta Plane into Sydney, Australia
Multiple passengers and crew have been injured after a Delta jet from Los Angeles to Sydney encountered turbulence on Friday morning.
Delta Flight 41 "experienced a brief period of turbulence" as it landed at Sydney Airport, an airline spokesperson told. Four flight attendants were injured.
The New South Wales Ambulance Service reported they assessed five individuals, and transported three of them to hospital with relatively minor issues that included spinal discomfort and head pain. The injured were between their 30s up to the 70s.
It is the most recent case of planes encountering atmospheric disturbance, with researchers indicating that global warming is a significant contributor.
The aircraft was carrying 245 passengers and fifteen staff members on the Airbus A350, the official said, stating that the plane arrived "without further incident" at the airport at 6:48 a.m. local time on the day in question.
The NSW Ambulance Service said they received a call just a mere three minutes prior to the plane landed, and response teams were standing by on the runway.
The reasons turbulence is growing more frequent - and more severe.
During the past year, 25 people were injured when another Delta jet, on a route from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, encountered "significant" atmospheric disturbance just two hours into the long-haul flight, and was forced to make an precautionary landing.
Earlier this year, those on board on a Singapore Airlines flight endured a terrifying five seconds of severe turbulence. A traveler passed away and many were hurt, as individuals not fastened in lifted out of their seats and crashed back down.
Bumpy air is fairly routine while flying, and while cases of significant turbulence appear to be increasing, they are statistically infrequent.
Data suggests that there are an estimated thousands of instances of severe-or-greater turbulence every year, out of a sum of over 35 million journeys that are conducted globally.
Intense turbulence is categorized as when the up and down movements of a plane passing through rough air masses exert more than 1.5g-force on your body - sufficient force to throw you from your seat if you were not fastened by a safety belt.
As climate change shifts weather patterns, experts warn that commercial aviation could become less smooth: temperature changes and altered air currents in the upper atmosphere are expected to heighten the regularity and severity of dangerous in-flight bumps.
