Several Hurt as Rough Air Strikes Delta Aircraft Arriving in Sydney, Australia
A number of individuals have been injured when a Delta Airlines aircraft originating in Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia was hit by turbulence this past Friday.
Flight DL41 "experienced a brief period of turbulence" as it landed at Sydney Airport, a representative for the carrier told. Four flight attendants sustained injuries.
The New South Wales Ambulance Service reported they assessed five patients, and transferred three to a medical facility with relatively minor issues that such as back pain and headaches. Those affected ranged from their 30s up to the 70s.
This marks the latest incident of planes being hit by turbulence, with experts saying that global warming is a significant contributor.
On board were 245 people and a crew of 15 on the aircraft, the official said, stating that the plane touched down "safely and normally" at the airport at 06:48 local time on Friday.
Paramedics said they were alerted just three minutes prior to the plane landed, and emergency vehicles were standing by on the runway.
Why in-flight bumpiness is growing more frequent - and potentially more dangerous.
In the previous year, 25 people sustained injuries when a Delta Airlines flight, travelling from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam, experienced "considerable" turbulence just a couple of hours into the lengthy trip, and had to make an emergency landing.
Recently, travelers and staff on a Singapore Airlines jet experienced a terrifying five seconds bout of severe turbulence. An individual passed away and many were hurt, as unbelted passengers were thrown from their seats and fell back down.
In-flight turbulence is not uncommon during flights, and while cases of significant turbulence are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are still very rare.
Data suggests that there are approximately thousands of instances of severe-or-greater turbulence annually, out of a sum of more than 35 million journeys that now take off around the world.
Severe turbulence is categorized as when the vertical motions of a jet passing through unstable air exert more than a significant G-force on your body - a strong enough force to lift you out of your seat if you did not have on a restraint.
As climate change alters weather patterns, specialists caution that commercial aviation could become more turbulent: shifts in temperature and altered air currents in the upper atmosphere are projected to boost the occurrence and strength of dangerous in-flight bumps.
