While flying through a dark and threatening sky, a British Airways plane was struck by lightning in an awful incident. The plane had taken off from Stuttgart in Germany and was headed to London’s Heathrow Airport when it happened at around 2 pm.
It meant that the jet had to be redirected due its being hit by lighting. This led to a delay of one hour and the passengers were transferred by road back to their original destination which is approximately 45 miles away. Despite this horrific ordeal, Jeco who was a passenger expressed her gratitude towards BA crew saying how amazing they were during the whole process “It was shocking,” according to Jeco as quoted in The Sun.
A grandmother whose grandson and son were on the flight also talked about their horrifying experience. The journey, known as “hell flight”, experienced strings of incidents. According to The Daily Mail report, brakes overheated while departing Stuttgart causing delays then a lightning strike while moving toward Britain resulted in diversion.
Flight Aware data shows that the aircraft flew smoothly until it encountered adverse weather conditions in its vicinity causing it to circle and deviate from its intended course for Heathrow. “Weather-related conditions in the region” led to Gatwick-bound BA919 being diverted as confirmed by a British Airways spokesperson.
Furthermore, another English Airways airplane which was traveling between Lisbon and London got struck by lightning during this thunderstorm (Independent).
“I’ve just been hit by lightening on approach into Heathrow,” said one passenger describing his experience. Additionally, the passenger described how the bolt came up underneath of the cockpit and exited out of the tail. It went through our cabin, they stated.
Despite having heard about such occurrences before but never witnessed any
However, even though there was lighting incidence; he maintained that “…the actual flight wasn’t affected…” besides adding that “Customers were kept informed…flight continued its approach for an uneventful arrival.”
