Unbelievable Footage: Boeing 777 Endures Lightning Strike En Route to London

by Gary Leff

An Air Canada Boeing 777 was struck by lightning as it departed Vancouver and continued to London’s Heathrow airport. It was inspected on arrival. Video of the strike happening is impressive!

On average every commercial plane is believed to be struck by lightning at least once a year, however it’s been over 40 years since a crash has been attributed to a lightning strike. The fuselage of a plane will conduct electricity and allow it to transmit from the strike and generally out the tail.

However Boeing actually reduced lightning protection in the wings of 787s in order to reduce costs and speed deliveries. They maintain that safety has not been compromised.

Here’s video from an Australian domestic Boeing 787 flight’s lightning strike.

And photos from a past American Airlines Boeing 787 lightning strike:

And here’s lightning damage to an American Airlines plane last year:

Aviation technology continues to soar beyond the limits of the sky – but nature’s power remains formidable.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. A couple of decades ago my mom was on a BOS>LHR flight when the aircraft was hit by lightning. It caused some of the instruments to go out, so the plane landed in Ireland. We were awakened by a 4 am landline call (this was back in the day) from Ireland, it was my mom calling to tell us she would be on another flight and delayed on arrival. She was pretty shaken.

  2. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if a 777 was as tough as an A-10 Warthog, but the 787 is another matter entirely. Those pics look pretty intense, you would think that substantial fuselage repair and/or replacement would be required. Blown away that Boeing decreased the lightning protection, and didn’t increase it after that.

  3. The only thing I retained from this story is that Boeing decreased lightening protection!! Does it ever end? When will this company wake up?

  4. It should be pretty easy to calculate how often different types of aircraft have to be taken out of service due to a lightning strike per mile flown. Is there data that 787s are more prone to damaging strikes, and if so, to what degree are they more likely to experience damage to the degree they’re out of service?

  5. I’m pretty sure that my high school physics teacher would say that of course lightening doesn’t harm an aircraft and certainly no one inside… An aircraft is nearly the equivalent of a metal sphere, just like a car, and since the electrons move around uniformly, they cancel each other out.

    Yes, it’s a thing.

  6. Add a Boeing 777 with a lightning strike to the television program “1,000 ways to die.”

  7. I was on a United flight from FRA to IAD to got struck and deverted to PHL last year. Not fun, but that was mostly due to the severe turbulence. The lightning strike itself was really loud though. The puzzling thing was why they flew into an obvious heavy storm.

  8. Was coming here solely to make a joke about how.the lighting strike is presumably blamed on Boeing profits over safety, and all the other clickbait. Nice pivot to the 787.

    Maybe Boeing could hire some Airbus folks since apparently their airplanes, including the carbon A350, don’t get struck or damaged by lightning?

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