The Unexpected Reason You Shouldn't Worry About Your Airplane Being Struck By Lightning

If the thought of flying in bad weather has you quaking in your window seat, you can rest easy knowing that modern air traffic control and aviation engineering has you covered — quite literally. Not only does lightning rarely strike modern planes, but when it does, planes have been engineered to expel their charger without any issues. 

The chance of lightning striking your plane is relatively low to begin with, since lightning only strikes each commercial airplane about once or twice per year. This isn't by pure luck — it's actually by design, since pilots tend to avoid putting their planes in situations where the conditions for lightning are already present. And you can't get struck by lightning if there's no lightning around. This is important since lightning can potentially strike planes even without any thunderclouds present, a phenomenon known as "aircraft-initiated lightning" that gained attention after the 1969 Apollo 12 launch when two lightning strikes hit the Saturn V module. Although no one was injured, the event made aerospace and aviation pros develop policies to completely avoid placing future launches in any weather conditions with the potential for lightning strikes, just to stay on the safe side. The same safety guidance has been applied to commercial airlines, too, so they can avoid weather that might cause aircraft-initiated lightning. This is something that's incredibly easy to do in a world where meteorologists can predict atmospheric conditions weeks in advance. 

And because the same folks who make those massive planes stay in the air are on the case, they've gone to great lengths to make sure those few lightning strikes that do hit planes quickly get discharged without causing any damage. In other words, if your plane does happen to get slapped by a sky taser, there's no need for nervous flyers to worry — especially when you know the best time to book a flight for anxious flyers.

As with many things in life, lightning strikes that hit planes can feel much more frightening than they actually are to passengers who don't realize how completely over-engineered to withstand lightning strikes commercial jets are. Take it from the 2024 Delta flight passenger whose plane was struck on its way from New York to Atlanta while starting the descent from its 34,000-foot altitude. Sharing their experience on r/Delta shortly after the fact, Redditor u/wombatterific recounted, "During our descent around 12000 feet there was a huge boom and white flash. Lots of screams and then anxiety as total silence from cockpit and flight attendants." 

But according to folks with airline industry knowledge, the worst part of that admittedly terrible passenger experience was Mother Nature's rather rude pre-landing wake-up call. As another pilot was quick to point out in the replies, most lightning strikes are almost unnoticeably uneventful thanks to the collective brilliance of aviation engineers. 

And even when strikes do make their presence known, they can't touch the folks inside, let alone the aviation components and jet fuel, thanks to the sheer genius of their design. Aluminum alloys are essential to airplane production and are used in everything from the turbines and cockpit instrumentation to a plane's doors, floors, and fuselage skin. In fact, about 80% of a Boeing 737 is manufactured using an aluminum alloy that incorporates metals like magnesium, copper, and zinc. A plane's conductive skin is interwoven with mesh, creating a giant Faraday cage that directs lightning along its surface before exiting out into the air in what's known as a "swept stroke."

Up until the mid-1960s, lightning-related plane crashes were a very real and present threat for airline travelers. As tends to be the case with the aviation industry, many of the safety features we enjoy today stem from a specific tragedy — in this case, the December 8, 1963 plane crash of Pan Am Flight 214 from San Juan to Philadelphia by way of Baltimore. After the plane crashed, killing all 81 passengers and crew members on board, an investigation from the NTSB predecessor the Civil Aeronautics Board determined that the plane had exploded after lightning struck the plane, igniting jet fuel vapor in the plane's fuel tanks.

Along with an earlier Trans World Airlines explosion in 1959 in Milan, the tragedy led to sweeping safety and manufacturing changes under the direction of the FAA, beginning with the creation of the multi-agency Lightning Protection Committee. The initiative also encompassed an Airworthiness Directive to ensure stricter lightning test standards and regulations along with engineering changes like the electrical bonding of certain components, fuel vent flame arrestors, and an increased wing span panel thickness. 

Even with all those changes, today's engineers — at labs like Boeing's Electromagnetic Effects (EME) Lab in South Carolina — are still working hard to innovate lightning protection, using thermal imaging and high voltage production equipment to test all types of airline components and ensure they are safer than safe. So, the next time you see a little flash when you're miles above the ground, just adjust your comfy neck pillow and remind yourself that even if a lightning strike feels pretty scary, some of the brightest folks in aerospace have engineered a modern marvel designed to keep you safe no matter how strong the charge.