What happens when lightning strucks airplane?

• Nothing serious happens because the modern airplanes are engineered such that it protects the plane.

While traveling by air you may have felt a turbulence that may caused by any factor such as interaction of warm and cold air, uneven air-current and in some less cases lightning.
Lightning, itself sounds dangerous, can do a lot damage to every living animal and trees or any property. How does a lightning is formed?


lightning is a phenomenon of electric discharge that occurs during the thunder storm. This mainly balances the charges between the clouds or the cloud and ground.so, lightning may strike between the clouds or between cloud and ground. The sudden flash during this phenomenon is a hot plasma that is due the abrupt flow of electron that we actually see and hear the pressure waves from ground.
   
         Watch lightning between the clouds at 6200 frames per second in the video below.
               Credits and copyrights to : Nathan Boor of Aimed Research

       

How does it affects a flying airplane?

When lightning hits the airplane it shakes the plane a little bit. This what the passengers and crew inside feel as turbulence sometime. Most of the lightning remain outside the airplane because of the phenomenon called Faraday Shield. In a Faraday shield, the electromagnetic field outside a conducting material does not affect the region inside cavity of the material. This way all of the lightning remain in the exterior of the plane and does not even affect the interior. So, where does it go next? The lightning now finds a different path to a lower potential and leaves off the plane. This way the plane survives the lightning.
There may be very serious damage if the spark of lightning reaches the fuel tank or if there is some gap on the exterior of the aircraft that may lead a passage of lightning into the interior. These all circumstances are kept in mind by the engineers and they design the aircraft such that nothings bad happen. Also, the aircraft is provided proper care and maintenance  by experts, every time before it takes off.  So, feel fearless to fly.

              The video shows an aircraft struck by lightning. 
              Source and credit to : Unknown.

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