None of the 500 people on board the Emirates Airlines Airbus A380 were injured as the plane flew through a storm as it approached London’s Heathrow Airport on April 23.
Videographer Chris Dawson, 37, pointed his digital camera at the plane from his balcony in south-west London about 7.30pm local time.
“I saw a storm coming and I thought there could be lightning,” he told Abu Dhabi’s English language newspaper The National.
“I wasn’t expecting it to hit a plane but I just got lucky.”
A United Emirates spokesperson said lightning strikes are not uncommon and that every plane in its fleet is designed and certified to withstand a lightning strike.
The average lightning bolt produces a current of 20,000 amps and can reach temperatures of 30,000C
But an airplane’s metal hull forms a Faraday cage that protects it from lightning, carrying the electric charge through the hull and expelling it at an output point without harming the aircraft or the passengers inside.
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