Several Hurt as In-Flight Disturbance Impacts A Delta Airlines Flight Arriving in Sydney, Australia
Several people have been injured after a Delta Airlines aircraft originating in Los Angeles to Sydney was hit by rough air Friday morning.
The flight, numbered 41 "experienced a brief period of turbulence" as it touched down at the Sydney airport, an airline spokesperson informed. Several cabin crew members were injured.
Local paramedics reported they evaluated five patients, and took three to the hospital with relatively minor issues that such as pain in the back and migraines. The patients' ages were between their 30s up to the 70s.
It is the latest incident of aircraft encountering severe turbulence, with aviation specialists pointing out that climate change is a key driver.
The aircraft was carrying 245 people and 15 crew members on the wide-body jet, the Delta spokesperson noted, stating that the plane landed "without further incident" at the airport at shortly before 7 a.m. on Friday morning.
Emergency responders reported they received a call just only 180 seconds ahead of the plane touched down, and ambulances were standing by on the runway.
Why plane turbulence is growing increasingly prevalent - and potentially more dangerous.
In the previous year, twenty-five passengers and crew sustained injuries when a separate Delta aircraft, flying from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, hit "significant" 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 endured a harrowing five seconds bout of severe turbulence. One passenger passed away and dozens were injured, as individuals not fastened in were thrown from their seats and crashed back down.
In-flight turbulence is fairly routine during flights, and while occurrences of rough conditions are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are statistically infrequent.
Estimates show that there are approximately five thousand cases of severe or worse turbulence annually, out of a total of more than 35 million journeys that now take off worldwide.
Intense turbulence is described as when the vertical motions of a aircraft going through rough air masses apply greater than a significant G-force on your body - enough to throw you from your seat if you weren't wearing a safety belt.
As a changing climate alters the conditions in the sky, researchers alert that flying could become less smooth: warming trends and altered air currents in the jet stream level are projected to boost the regularity and severity of significant turbulence.
