Multiple Injured as Turbulence Impacts Delta Flight into Sydney, Australia
A number of individuals sustained injuries when a Delta jet traveling from Los Angeles to Sydney experienced rough air this past Friday.
Flight DL41 "experienced a brief period of turbulence" as it touched down at the Sydney airport, a representative for the carrier informed. Several cabin crew members were injured.
The New South Wales Ambulance Service reported they treated a total of five people, and transported three of them to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries that included back pain and headaches. The patients' ages ranged from their 30s to 70s.
This marks the latest incident of commercial jets experiencing turbulence, with experts indicating that global warming is a significant contributor.
There were 245 people and 15 crew members on the wide-body jet, the representative noted, stating that the plane landed "safely" at the airport at shortly before 7 a.m. on the day in question.
The NSW Ambulance Service indicated they were alerted just only 180 seconds prior to the plane landed, and ambulances were waiting on the tarmac.
Why plane turbulence is growing more frequent - and often stronger.
In the previous year, two dozen individuals were injured when a separate Delta aircraft, on a route from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, Netherlands, encountered "significant" rough air just two hours into the lengthy trip, and had to make an unscheduled landing.
Earlier this year, those on board on a Singapore Airlines flight went through a harrowing brief five-second period of extreme instability. An individual lost their life and numerous people sustained injuries, as individuals not fastened in were thrown from their seats and were slammed back.
Bumpy air is fairly routine during flights, and while occurrences of rough conditions are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are still very rare.
Estimates show that there are approximately thousands of instances of severe or worse turbulence every year, out of a total of over 35 million journeys that now take off globally.
Strong atmospheric disturbance is categorized as when the up and down movements of a jet going through unstable air apply more than 1.5g-force on your body - sufficient force to throw you from your seat if you did not have on a seatbelt.
As climate change shifts the conditions in the sky, specialists caution that air travel could become more turbulent: temperature changes and changing jet streams in the higher altitudes are expected to boost the frequency and intensity of dangerous in-flight bumps.
