Several Injured as Rough Air Impacts Delta Plane Arriving in Sydney, Australia

Several people have been injured following a Delta aircraft from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia encountered significant turbulence on Friday morning.

Delta Flight 41 "encountered brief turbulence" as it touched down at the Sydney airport, an airline spokesperson stated. A number of the onboard staff sustained injuries.

Emergency medical services reported they assessed a total of five people, and transferred a trio to a medical facility with relatively minor issues that comprised spinal discomfort and head pain. The patients' ages were between their thirties and seventies.

It is the most recent case of planes being hit by atmospheric disturbance, with experts saying that climate change is a significant contributor.

The aircraft was carrying nearly 250 travelers and 15 crew members on the wide-body jet, the representative noted, adding that the plane touched down "safely and normally" at the airport at 6:48 a.m. local time on Friday.

The NSW Ambulance Service said they were alerted just a mere three minutes before the plane touched down, and ambulances were standing by on the runway.

Why plane turbulence is getting increasingly prevalent - and often stronger.

Last year, 25 people sustained injuries when another Delta jet, travelling from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, Netherlands, hit "considerable" rough air just 120 minutes into the long-haul flight, and had to make an unscheduled landing.

Recently, those on board on a Singapore Airlines jet went through a harrowing brief five-second bout of severe turbulence. A traveler lost their life and many were hurt, as those without seatbelts rose out of their seats and fell back down.

In-flight turbulence is fairly routine during flights, and while occurrences of rough conditions are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are still very rare.

Data suggests that there are around 5,000 incidents of severe or worse turbulence annually, out of a total of in excess of 35 million aircraft departures that now take off around the world.

Intense turbulence is defined as when the vertical motions of a plane going through disturbed air generate greater than a significant G-force on your body - enough to throw you from your seat if you were not fastened by a seatbelt.

As global warming modifies the conditions in the sky, specialists caution that commercial aviation could become bumpier: temperature changes and altered air currents in the jet stream level are expected to heighten the regularity and severity of dangerous in-flight bumps.