A Number of Injured as Rough Air Hits A Delta Airlines Flight Arriving in Sydney
A number of individuals have been injured following a Delta flight originating in LA to Sydney was hit by turbulence Friday morning.
Flight DL41 "encountered brief turbulence" as it made its approach and landed at the Sydney airport, a company official informed. Several cabin crew members sustained injuries.
The New South Wales Ambulance Service said they assessed five individuals, and transferred three of them to hospital with relatively minor issues that included pain in the back and migraines. The patients' ages spanned from their 30s up to the 70s.
It is the latest incident of aircraft encountering severe turbulence, with aviation specialists pointing out that global warming is a major factor.
The aircraft was carrying nearly 250 travelers and fifteen staff members on the Airbus A350, the official noted, clarifying that the plane landed "safely and normally" at the airport at shortly before 7 a.m. on the day in question.
Paramedics reported they received a call just three minutes prior to the plane touched down, and response teams were standing by on the runway.
Why plane turbulence is growing increasingly prevalent - and often stronger.
In the previous year, two dozen individuals sustained injuries when a Delta Airlines flight, flying from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, experienced "considerable" turbulence just 120 minutes into the long-haul flight, and was forced to make an emergency landing.
Recently, those on board on a Singapore Airlines flight went through a terrifying brief five-second period of extreme instability. One passenger passed away and numerous people sustained injuries, as unbelted passengers lifted out of their seats and were slammed back.
Turbulence is not uncommon during flights, and while occurrences of significant turbulence seem to be rising, they are still very rare.
Research indicates that there are around five thousand cases of severe or worse turbulence annually, out of a sum of over 35 million aircraft departures that currently occur worldwide.
Intense turbulence is categorized as when the up and down movements of a plane passing through disturbed air apply more than 1.5 times the force of gravity on your body - enough to lift you out of your seat if you did not have on a restraint.
As climate change shifts the conditions in the sky, experts warn that air travel could become less smooth: warming trends and shifting wind patterns in the upper atmosphere are expected to increase the regularity and severity of dangerous in-flight bumps.