A Number of Injured as Rough Air Hits Delta Flight into Sydney, Australia

A number of individuals sustained injuries after a Delta Airlines flight originating in LA to Sydney experienced significant turbulence on Friday morning.

Flight DL41 "encountered brief turbulence" as it landed at the Sydney airport, an airline spokesperson told. A number of the onboard staff sustained injuries.

Emergency medical services stated they treated a total of five people, and took three of them to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries that included pain in the back and migraines. Those affected ranged from their 30s up to the 70s.

This marks the most recent case of planes encountering severe turbulence, with researchers pointing out that shifting climate patterns is a key driver.

There were nearly 250 travelers and 15 crew members on the Airbus A350, the official noted, adding that the plane arrived "safely" at Sydney Airport at 6:48 a.m. local time on Friday morning.

Paramedics indicated they received a call just three minutes before the plane touched down, and response teams were ready and waiting at the airport.

The reasons turbulence is growing more common - and potentially more dangerous.

During the past year, two dozen individuals sustained injuries when another Delta jet, travelling from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, Netherlands, hit "severe" rough air just 120 minutes into the long-haul flight, and was forced to make an precautionary landing.

Earlier this year, those on board on a Singapore Airlines jet went through a harrowing brief five-second period of extreme instability. One passenger lost their life and numerous people sustained injuries, as those without seatbelts lifted out of their seats and fell back down.

Turbulence is fairly routine during flights, and while cases of significant turbulence are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are still very rare.

Research indicates that there are an estimated thousands of instances of severe or worse turbulence every year, out of a sum of in excess of 35 million aircraft departures that now take off worldwide.

Severe turbulence is categorized as when the sudden jolts of a aircraft passing through unstable air exert more than 1.5g-force on your body - a strong enough force to throw you from your seat if you weren't wearing a restraint.

As climate change shifts atmospheric conditions, specialists caution that flying could become bumpier: warming trends and shifting wind patterns in the jet stream level are projected to heighten the regularity and severity of significant turbulence.