A Number of Affected as Turbulence Strikes Delta Flight Landing at Sydney, Australia
Multiple passengers and crew were hurt after a Delta aircraft traveling from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia was hit by rough air Friday morning.
Flight DL41 "experienced a brief period of turbulence" as it landed at the Sydney airport, a representative for the carrier informed. Several cabin crew members were injured.
Local paramedics reported they evaluated five individuals, and transferred three of them to a medical facility with non-life-threatening injuries that included pain in the back and head pain. The injured ranged from their thirties and seventies.
This marks the newest example of aircraft being hit by turbulence, with experts saying that global warming is a major factor.
On board were nearly 250 travelers and 15 crew members on the Airbus A350, the Delta spokesperson noted, clarifying that the plane touched down "without further incident" at Sydney Airport at 06:48 local time on the day in question.
Paramedics said they got a call just three minutes before the plane landed, and ambulances were standing by on the runway.
The reasons turbulence is growing more common - and more severe.
During the past year, twenty-five passengers and crew were injured when another Delta jet, on a route from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, encountered "considerable" atmospheric disturbance just 120 minutes into the lengthy trip, and had to make an emergency landing.
Earlier this year, travelers and staff on a Singapore Airlines jet experienced a frightening brief five-second bout of severe turbulence. An individual died and dozens were injured, as those without seatbelts lifted out of their seats and fell back down.
In-flight turbulence is not uncommon during flights, and while occurrences of rough conditions are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are statistically infrequent.
Research indicates that there are around five thousand cases of severe or worse turbulence each year, out of a sum of over 35 million journeys that now take off worldwide.
Strong atmospheric disturbance is categorized as when the sudden jolts of a plane passing through unstable air apply more than 1.5 times the force of gravity on your body - a strong enough force to propel you from your seat if you weren't wearing a restraint.
As a changing climate modifies atmospheric conditions, specialists caution that air travel could become more turbulent: shifts in temperature and changing jet streams in the jet stream level are expected to boost the regularity and severity of dangerous in-flight bumps.
