14 DAY TRIAL // Seeing a plane getting struck by a lightning bolt is pretty scary, but when an aircraft is hit by three bolts at once it's even more frightening. That's what a storm watcher at the ground happened to see on Friday afternoon, when a flight from Amsterdam to England’s Birmingham International Airport was struck by lightning.
Passengers of the KLM flight said that a “massive bang” shook the aircraft, but they were not sure what had happened. They only found out that their plane had been struck not by one, but by three lightning bolts after the landing.
Luckily, the blasts did not affect the plane's descending in any way.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you may have noticed we were hit by lightning,” the calm captain announced after landing safely at around 4 p.m. at Birmingham Airport.
Well, as you probably know, planes getting struck by lightning aren't too much of a problem these days, as they can act as conductors and let the bolt's electricity pass through it. Aircrafts get struck by lightning every day, and the metal fuselage directs it to the ground, so those on board have nothing to worry about.
One of the passengers that was on the flight told Daily Mail that although at first he was concerned, in the end it was an exciting experience.
“After the bang, my initial thought was the engine had blown-up. Surprisingly, it wasn’t frightening, it was exciting. You are waiting for something else to happen, then you realize nothing has gone wrong,” Tony Everitt, 51, said.
Although the 174 passengers on board were safe, for people on the ground it still was a terrifying image to see. The sight of a huge lightning bolt striking an aircraft thousands of feet in the air is always scary.
Tracy Meakin White, who was photographing the storm, captured a picture of the Boeing 737 being struck by three massive lightning bolts at once. The woman, who is not a professional photographer, said the image was just a “stroke of luck.”
“I didn’t even see the plane at first, I was just clicking on my phone and then afterwards I saw the aircraft. I think it is a once in a lifetime picture, I doubt I will see anything like that again,” she said.
Experts say that almost all commercial airliners are struck by lightning at least once a year during their flights. However, passenger planes have an electrical shielding that protects the inside of the plane from the effects of lightning bolts.