A Number of Affected as Rough Air Hits A Delta Airlines Plane Landing at Sydney, Australia

Several people have been injured following a Delta Airlines aircraft traveling from Los Angeles to Sydney was hit by turbulence Friday morning.

Delta Flight 41 "experienced a brief period of turbulence" as it landed at Sydney Airport, a company official informed. Several cabin crew members sustained injuries.

Emergency medical services reported they assessed five individuals, and transferred three of them to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries that included spinal discomfort and headaches. The injured were between their 30s up to the 70s.

It is the latest incident of commercial jets being hit by severe turbulence, with researchers saying that global warming is a major factor.

There were 245 passengers and a crew of 15 on the Airbus A350, the Delta spokesperson noted, stating that the plane touched down "without further incident" at the airport at 6:48 a.m. local time on the day in question.

The NSW Ambulance Service indicated they were alerted just a mere three minutes prior to the plane arrived, and response teams were ready and waiting at the airport.

Why in-flight bumpiness is getting more frequent - and often stronger.

In the previous year, 25 people were injured when a separate Delta aircraft, flying from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam, experienced "considerable" turbulence just 120 minutes into the lengthy trip, and had to make an unscheduled landing.

Recently, passengers and crew on a Singapore Airlines flight endured a harrowing short but intense bout of severe turbulence. An individual passed away and numerous people sustained injuries, as those without seatbelts were thrown from their seats and were slammed back.

Bumpy air is not uncommon during flights, and while cases of rough conditions are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are still very rare.

Research indicates that there are an estimated thousands of instances of severe-or-greater turbulence every year, out of a overall number of in excess of 35 million aircraft departures that currently occur globally.

Intense turbulence is defined as when the up and down movements of a jet going through unstable air apply greater than a significant G-force on your body - enough to lift you out of your seat if you did not have on a seatbelt.

As a changing climate shifts the conditions in the sky, researchers alert that air travel could become less smooth: shifts in temperature and altered air currents in the upper atmosphere are expected to boost the frequency and intensity of dangerous in-flight bumps.