Several Hurt as In-Flight Disturbance Impacts Delta Aircraft into Sydney, Australia

A number of individuals were hurt after a Delta Airlines flight traveling from LA to Sydney, Australia encountered significant turbulence on Friday morning.

Flight DL41 "experienced a brief period of turbulence" as it landed at Sydney Airport, an airline spokesperson told. Four flight attendants were injured.

Local paramedics said they evaluated a total of five people, and transferred a trio to hospital with minor injuries that comprised pain in the back and headaches. The injured spanned from their thirties and seventies.

It is the most recent case of planes encountering turbulence, with experts indicating that climate change is a significant contributor.

On board were nearly 250 travelers and fifteen staff members on the aircraft, the representative said, stating that the plane touched down "safely" at Sydney Airport at shortly before 7 a.m. on Friday morning.

Paramedics reported they got a call just a mere three minutes ahead of the plane landed, and response teams were waiting on the tarmac.

Why in-flight bumpiness is getting more common - and often stronger.

In the previous year, two dozen individuals were injured when a Delta Airlines flight, on a route from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam, experienced "significant" turbulence just 120 minutes into the long-haul flight, and had to make an emergency landing.

Earlier this year, passengers and crew on a Singapore Airlines jet went through a frightening five seconds bout of severe turbulence. A traveler passed away and numerous people sustained injuries, as unbelted passengers lifted out of their seats and crashed back down.

In-flight turbulence is fairly routine on aircraft journeys, and while cases of significant turbulence are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are remained quite uncommon.

Data suggests that there are around thousands of instances of significant in-flight disturbance annually, out of a total of in excess of 35 million aircraft departures that now take off around the world.

Strong atmospheric disturbance is defined as when the vertical motions of a plane passing through unstable air exert greater than 1.5 times the force of gravity on your body - sufficient force to throw you from your seat if you weren't wearing a seatbelt.

As climate change shifts weather patterns, researchers alert that commercial aviation could become less smooth: shifts in temperature and changing jet streams in the higher altitudes are expected to increase the frequency and intensity of dangerous in-flight bumps.