Several Injured as In-Flight Disturbance Hits Delta Plane Arriving in Sydney, Australia

Several people were hurt following a Delta jet originating in LA to Sydney, Australia was hit by turbulence this past Friday.

The flight, numbered 41 "encountered brief turbulence" as it touched down at the Sydney airport, a company official informed. Four flight attendants sustained injuries.

Emergency medical services reported they assessed five patients, and transferred a trio to hospital with relatively minor issues that included pain in the back and migraines. The patients' ages ranged from their thirties and seventies.

It is the latest incident of commercial jets experiencing severe turbulence, with aviation specialists saying that global warming is a key driver.

There were 245 passengers and fifteen staff members on the wide-body jet, the Delta spokesperson said, adding that the plane touched down "safely" at Sydney 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 arrived, and response teams were ready and waiting at the airport.

Why in-flight bumpiness is getting increasingly prevalent - and potentially more dangerous.

In the previous year, 25 people were hurt when a Delta Airlines flight, flying from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, Netherlands, experienced "considerable" rough air just two hours into the lengthy trip, and had to make an precautionary landing.

Recently, travelers and staff on a Singapore Airlines jet went through a harrowing brief five-second period of extreme instability. One passenger lost their life and many were hurt, as unbelted passengers were thrown from their seats and crashed back down.

In-flight turbulence is not uncommon during flights, and while occurrences of strong or severe turbulence are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are still very rare.

Research indicates that there are an estimated five thousand cases of severe-or-greater turbulence each year, out of a overall number of more than 35 million flights that are conducted worldwide.

Intense turbulence is described as when the vertical motions of a jet experiencing unstable air exert greater than 1.5 times the force of gravity on your body - enough to throw you from your seat if you were not fastened by a restraint.

As global warming alters atmospheric conditions, experts warn that air travel could become bumpier: shifts in temperature and altered air currents in the upper atmosphere are expected to increase the regularity and severity of severe turbulence.