A Number of Injured as Rough Air Hits A Delta Airlines Flight Arriving in Sydney, Australia
Multiple passengers and crew were hurt when a Delta aircraft traveling from Los Angeles to Sydney experienced turbulence this past Friday.
The flight, numbered 41 "encountered brief turbulence" as it touched down at the Sydney airport, a company official told. Four flight attendants were injured.
Local paramedics stated they evaluated five patients, and transported three to a medical facility with non-life-threatening injuries that included back pain and head pain. The patients' ages ranged from their thirties and seventies.
The event represents the most recent case of commercial jets encountering atmospheric disturbance, with aviation specialists indicating that climate change is a key driver.
There were 245 passengers and a crew of 15 on the Airbus A350, the Delta spokesperson added, adding that the plane arrived "without further incident" at the airport at 6:48 a.m. local time on Friday morning.
Emergency responders indicated they were alerted just three minutes prior to the plane landed, and ambulances were ready and waiting at the airport.
Why in-flight bumpiness is becoming more frequent - and more severe.
During the past year, twenty-five passengers and crew were injured when a Delta Airlines flight, flying from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, Netherlands, encountered "significant" rough air just two hours into the long-haul flight, and had to make an unscheduled landing.
Earlier this year, passengers and crew on a Singapore Airlines flight experienced a harrowing brief five-second period of extreme instability. An individual died and numerous people sustained injuries, as unbelted passengers lifted out of their seats and crashed back down.
Turbulence is fairly routine on aircraft journeys, and while occurrences of strong or severe turbulence are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are statistically infrequent.
Research indicates that there are approximately thousands of instances of severe-or-greater turbulence annually, out of a overall number of in excess of 35 million flights that now take off globally.
Strong atmospheric disturbance is defined as when the sudden jolts of a plane passing through rough air masses generate greater than 1.5 times the force of gravity on your body - sufficient force to lift you out of your seat if you weren't wearing a seatbelt.
As climate change alters weather patterns, specialists caution that flying could become less smooth: temperature changes and shifting wind patterns in the jet stream level are projected to boost the frequency and intensity of severe turbulence.
