Multiple Affected as Rough Air Strikes A Delta Airlines Aircraft Arriving in Sydney, Australia
A number of individuals sustained injuries when a Delta aircraft traveling from LA to Sydney experienced turbulence on Friday morning.
Flight DL41 "experienced a brief period of turbulence" as it made its approach and landed at Sydney Airport, a representative for the carrier informed. Several cabin crew members sustained injuries.
Local paramedics stated they evaluated five individuals, and transferred a trio to the hospital with relatively minor issues that included spinal discomfort and migraines. The patients' ages were between their 30s up to the 70s.
It is the latest incident of commercial jets encountering atmospheric disturbance, with experts indicating that global warming is a major factor.
On board were 245 people and fifteen staff members on the Airbus A350, the Delta spokesperson added, adding that the plane arrived "safely" at Sydney Airport at 06:48 local time on the day in question.
Paramedics reported they were alerted just only 180 seconds before the plane landed, and ambulances were ready and waiting at the airport.
The reasons turbulence is becoming more frequent - and potentially more dangerous.
Last year, two dozen individuals were hurt when a separate Delta aircraft, travelling from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, Netherlands, encountered "considerable" rough air just 120 minutes into the long-haul flight, and had to make an unscheduled landing.
Recently, travelers and staff on a Singapore Airlines jet went through a harrowing short but intense period of extreme instability. An individual died and many were hurt, as unbelted passengers rose out of their seats and crashed back down.
Turbulence is not uncommon during flights, and while occurrences of strong or severe turbulence appear to be increasing, they are still very rare.
Estimates show that there are around 5,000 incidents of severe-or-greater turbulence annually, out of a overall number of over 35 million flights that are conducted worldwide.
Severe turbulence is categorized as when the vertical motions of a plane experiencing rough air masses exert more than 1.5 times the force of gravity on your body - a strong enough force to lift you out of your seat if you did not have on a restraint.
As global warming modifies atmospheric conditions, researchers alert that air travel could become bumpier: shifts in temperature and changing jet streams in the jet stream level are projected to boost the regularity and severity of severe turbulence.
