Multiple Injured as In-Flight Disturbance Strikes A Delta Airlines Flight Landing at Sydney
A number of individuals sustained injuries when a Delta Airlines jet traveling from Los Angeles to Sydney experienced turbulence this past Friday.
Flight DL41 "encountered brief turbulence" as it touched down at the Sydney airport, a company official informed. Several cabin crew members were injured.
Local paramedics said they assessed five patients, and transported three of them to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries that comprised pain in the back and headaches. The injured spanned from their thirties and seventies.
The event represents the latest incident of planes encountering atmospheric disturbance, with aviation specialists pointing out that shifting climate patterns is a major factor.
On board were 245 people and fifteen staff members on the aircraft, the Delta spokesperson noted, clarifying that the plane arrived "safely" at the airport at 6:48 a.m. local time on Friday morning.
Paramedics said they received a call just a mere three minutes before the plane arrived, and ambulances were standing by on the runway.
The reasons turbulence is becoming more frequent - and often stronger.
Last year, two dozen individuals sustained injuries when a separate Delta aircraft, flying from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam, Netherlands, encountered "significant" atmospheric disturbance just 120 minutes into the lengthy trip, and diverted for an emergency landing.
Earlier this year, passengers and crew on a Singapore Airlines flight experienced a frightening five seconds of severe turbulence. One passenger died and numerous people sustained injuries, as unbelted passengers rose out of their seats and were slammed back.
Turbulence is a common occurrence during flights, and while cases of rough conditions seem to be rising, they are statistically infrequent.
Research indicates that there are around thousands of instances of severe or worse turbulence annually, out of a overall number of more than 35 million aircraft departures that now take off globally.
Intense turbulence is described as when the vertical motions of a plane going through disturbed air exert 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 seatbelt.
As global warming modifies weather patterns, experts warn that commercial aviation could become bumpier: temperature changes and altered air currents in the higher altitudes are expected to heighten the regularity and severity of dangerous in-flight bumps.
