Fun Flight!!

mulligan

mulligan

Cleared for Takeoff
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Sep 27, 2015
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Mulligan
So, yesterday on my commercial flight from ATL to BHM, we ride "around" the storm to come through the back side of it which will add 20-30 minutes to the 20-30 minute flight. No big deal. So as I learn about an entire new level of turbulence I see lightning in the area. Think to myself, wow, good thing we are flying around it. Right around 9,900 feet (following on ForeFlight) THUMP-BANG. The left wingtip lights up like a Christmas tree. My wife squeezes my knee and says, did we just get stuck by lightning? I said, yup, don't worry, happens all the time. The woman behind us went into an open prayer session that could be heard from the ground and she made up for a lifetime of not going to church.

I just sat there quietly watching my ipad but was thinking to myself, does it really happen all the time and why isn't there a gapping hole in the wing and smoke flying everywhere, and why didn't anyone get electrocuted.

Oh well, in almost 2 million miles of commercial flight I do not recall ever getting struck in the air and with only a couple hundred hours as a PPL, hope I never see it in my small plane!!

Other than the crew checking out the plane as soon as we got to the gate when they typically hang out and say bye bye, bye bye, bye bye, bye bye, there was no mention of the incident. Thought that was strange too!
 
Had a few flying for the airline. Worse one was maybe 1" diameter "burnt" hole on the nose gear doors where it entered and I think we found a small exit hole at the rear of the jet. That day we had 3-4 get hit going into ATL all on the LaGrange arrival. Screws up the flight schedule with a couple planes out for repairs.
 
Faraday Cage...the exit point might get fried / melted though.
 
Your lucky the wings didn't fall off...happens about 50% of the time every time an airliner flies through those storms.
 
So they flew an "arc" around the storm?
 
Y'all need to be generating something a little more electrifying.
 
Must have flown into a coulomb nimbus.
 
Bobanna said:
Source? Although 81% of statistics are made-up, I'm interested in the source of the "about 50%" claim. In fact, I would like to see any citation or link identifying airframe failure of an airliner in a thunderstorm.

Try to keep up.
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Lol it was a joke...gotta work on your sarcasm sensing skills
 
mulligan said:
Other than the crew checking out the plane as soon as we got to the gate when they typically hang out and say bye bye, bye bye, bye bye, bye bye, there was no mention of the incident. Thought that was strange too!
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The crew said nothing to the passengers? Shocking.!!
 
I was going to write a short reply but, instead, decided to write anode
 
texasag93 said:
All of this lightning talk has to be followed with

CLAP!
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you might find some resitance trying to give someone the clap. Of course some will remain un phased by the suggestion because they are well grounded.
 
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