On December 20th, an 
American Airlines
Airbus A321 was forced to return to Charlotte after experiencing a lightning strike during departure.
Photo: Wenjie Zheng | Shutterstock
The aircraft involved in the lightning strike incident – N996AN – is a relatively young eight year-old Airbus A321-200
which was delivered new to American in December 2016.
AA506 to Seattle
The A321 that operated the flight on left gate B9 at Charlotte Douglas International Airport
at 16:58 local time after a delay of 40 minutes. Although the cause of the delay was unspecified, it was most likely due to bad thunderstorms that were purportedly surrounding the Charlotte area at the time.
According to tracking data from Flightradar24, flight 506 powered down and out of runway 36C at Charlottle International Airport at 17:21 local time, making a left turn after takeoff to proceed to its planned route. While climbing through 29,000 feet, the A321’s fuselage sustained a lightning strike focused on the aircraft’s nose.
Out of an abundance of caution, the pilots of the flight abruptly terminated their aircraft’s climb and chose to return to Charlotte, but did not declare an emergency, leveling out at 29,000 feet while being vectored by air traffic control back to the airport.
After just 52 minutes in the air, AA506 touched down on the same runway it took off from at Charlotte (runway 36C) at 18:13 local time, making a routine landing before taxiing to gate A12.
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Replacement aircraft
On the ground, an American’s maintenance crew assessed the damage done by the lightning strike to the A321 involved in the incident and found the aircraft’s nose too damaged to be considered safe to fly.
The nose of the Airbus A321 houses its onboard weather radar (known as a “radome”), which allows pilots to see the weather conditions ahead of them through their cockpit displays, allowing them to navigate their aircraft through difficult weather conditions. In the case of AA506, this was especially important in an area such as Charlotte that is prone to thunderstorms.
As such, the decision was made to ground N996AN and for a replacement aircraft to be sent to continue flight 506 to Seattle. The flight was rescheduled for the following morning on December 21st.
American Airlines most likely “delayed” their flight for over 10 hours instead of canceling and rescheduling it in order to avoid being forced to provide accommodation and compensation to passengers on the affected flight.
The following morning at 06:24 local time and after a delay of over 11 hours, flight 506 once again lifted off runway 36C at Charlotte bound for Seattle. After an uneventful 5-hour and 17-minute flight cruising at 26,000 and 32,000 feet, flight 506 finally touched down on runway 16R at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
at 08:40 local time. The replacement aircraft that operated the flight was another A321 registered as N581UW. The aircraft was delivered to American in June 2014. It is nicknamed “Piedmont Peacemaker”, as its painted in a Piedmont Airlines retro livery.
Photo: Victor De Leon | Shutterstock
After two days on the ground, the original aircraft involved in the lightning strike incident, N996AN, was back in service.
Lightning strikes: Potentially deadly
Statistics released by Airbus show that on average, every “in-service aircraft” is struck by lightning at least once per year, or at least once every 3,000 flight hours. The vast majority of the time, lightning strikes are harmless to aircraft. This is because commercial aircraft fuselages are built to withstand said strikes by conducting the current induced by them from the tips of the extremities of the aircraft through its fuselage and down to the ground. In effect, this creates a “Faraday Cage” that prevents an aircraft and its electronics from effectively being fried.
Photo: Pixabay
On the rare occasion that lightning does prove to be damaging to an aircraft, it can be deadly to the occupants onboard.
A notorious example of a lightning-induced plane crash is that of Pan Am
flight 214, operated by a Boeing 707
. The aircraft was struck by lightning in while on approach to Philadelphia International Airport
in 1963. The aircraft’s fuel tank ignited after the strike, leading to the deaths of all 81 passengers onboard the flight.