Passengers rest assured: Good lightning protection aircraft!

When an Airbus 380 from Dubai was about to land at Heathrow airport in a May stormy night in London, it was hit by a giant lightning strike. This incident has been recorded, providing the world with a rare view of the evolution of a common phenomenon.

>> The scene of super hero A380 is hit by lightning

According to Live Science, a medium-sized commercial aircraft could be struck more than once a year. By analyzing the few videos recorded about such incidents, atmospheric scientists have explored the causes and how they occur.

Vlad Mazur - a lightning specialist from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said most of the lightning strikes were actually caused by the aircraft themselves. The metal body of the aircraft increases the electric field of the storm clouds as the plane passes by them. This can sometimes lead to an electrical breakdown.

" In the video above, there is clearly a lightning strike. You can see a dark sky, rain and some other evidence of a thunderstorm. Most likely, lightning has ended. in nature, but in weakening storms, there is a very high electric field, which is enough to support the formation of lightning, but there is no natural mechanism to start lightning. It acts as a trigger for artificial lightning, "said Mazur.

Mazur added that the metal body (mostly aluminum) of the aircraft acts as a transmission device . Between the electric field of the storm cloud, the anode forms one side of the transmission device and the cathode forms on the other side. " The charge takes place at the point where the fuselage of the fuselage is very sharp, like the tip of the nose as well as the head of the tail and the wings. These charged points increase the surrounding electric field. power generator, initiating the formation of a plasma channel ".

Ordinary planes are good against lightning.

According to Bill Rison, an electrical engineer and lightning research physicist at the New Mexico Institute of Technology, in the video, two plasma channels, which are moving pathways in a lightning strike, can be viewed. see going out from opposite points of the plane.

Usually, the aircraft struggle with lightning strikes. Electricity moves around, not through them. Of the 140,000 airline accidents recorded by the US National Traffic Safety Administration (NTSB), only 24 were struck by lightning. Most of these incidents involve small private aircraft or helicopters, and only 5 of them are deadly.

Up to now, the worst plane crash due to lightning struck in 1963, when a lightning sparked the fuel storage compartment of an aircraft in the sky Elkton, Maryland, USA. Although the passengers were protected from electricity by lightning, the fuel cell exploded causing the plane to crash, killing 81 passengers and crew members.