Here's why planes can be struck and survive

There are few things more alarming for an airplane passenger than to look out the window and see a lightning storm. After all, you’re flying in a metal tube through the sky and it looks like you're inches away from bolts of pure electricity. It seems like a recipe for the kind of catastrophe that ends up in headlines. In reality, though, when it comes to lightning and planes, the plane always wins. In fact, it’s estimated that on average, lightning hits each aircraft once a year—or once per every 1,000 hours of flight time. Yet, lighting hasn’t brought down a plane since 1963.

Airplanes are designed to withstand hundreds of thousands of amperes of electricity—far more electricity than a lightning bolt can deliver. An airplane’s first round of defense is ensuring that fuel tanks and fuel lines are fully encased so that it almost impossible for a lightning spark to trigger a fuel explosion.

Adding to that safety precaution, the skin of airplanes—aluminum in older planes, a composite in more modern models—is designed to conduct electricity off of the plane. When lightning strikes a plane, it sends up to 200,000 amperes of electricity rocketing into the plane’s skin. The electricity follows the outer surface of the plane’s frame and then jumps back into the air, thanks to little antenna-like devices called static wicks.

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