A Number of Injured as Rough Air Impacts Delta Flight Landing at Sydney, Australia

Several people sustained injuries after a Delta jet from Los Angeles to Sydney encountered rough air Friday morning.

Delta Flight 41 "went through a short bout of rough air" as it made its approach and landed at the Sydney airport, a company official told. Four flight attendants sustained injuries.

The New South Wales Ambulance Service said they treated five patients, and took three to the hospital with relatively minor issues that comprised pain in the back and migraines. The patients' ages were between their thirties and seventies.

It is the most recent case of planes encountering turbulence, with aviation specialists saying that shifting climate patterns is a major factor.

The aircraft was carrying nearly 250 travelers and fifteen staff members on the Airbus A350, the official said, clarifying that the plane arrived "safely" at the airport at shortly before 7 a.m. on Friday morning.

Emergency responders said they received a call just only 180 seconds ahead of the plane touched down, and emergency vehicles were standing by on the runway.

Why in-flight bumpiness is getting more common - and potentially more dangerous.

In the previous year, two dozen individuals sustained injuries when a separate Delta aircraft, travelling from Salt Lake City, Utah to Amsterdam, hit "considerable" turbulence just 120 minutes into the transoceanic journey, and was forced to make an emergency landing.

Earlier this year, passengers and crew on a certain international flight experienced a terrifying brief five-second bout of severe turbulence. An individual passed away and many were hurt, as unbelted passengers lifted out of their seats and crashed back down.

Turbulence is a common occurrence while flying, and while occurrences of significant turbulence are reportedly becoming more frequent, they are still very rare.

Data suggests that there are approximately five thousand cases of severe or worse turbulence every year, out of a sum of in excess of 35 million journeys that now take off worldwide.

Intense turbulence is categorized as when the vertical motions of a plane passing through unstable air generate in excess of 1.5 times the force of gravity on your body - sufficient force to throw you from your seat if you did not have on a safety belt.

As climate change shifts the conditions in the sky, specialists caution that flying could become more turbulent: temperature changes and changing jet streams in the jet stream level are projected to boost the frequency and intensity of dangerous in-flight bumps.