Managing Lightning

Lightning always gets your attention. It should. On average, 51 people die in the U.S. each year from lightning strikes, making it the second-most common cause of storm-related deaths in the country, behind only floods. Hundreds more people are struck by lightning each year in the U.S., resulting in significant injury. Lightning strikes, however, mostly affect people on the ground and generally cause little to no injury to pilots in the air despite NOAA estimates that there are about 25 million lightning strikes in the U.S. each year.

Key Takeaways:

• While lightning poses significant danger on the ground, aircraft are designed with features like conductive skins and Faraday cages to safely dissipate electrical energy, making catastrophic damage or pilot injury from a direct strike rare.
• For pilots, lightning primarily serves as a crucial indicator of dangerous associated weather conditions within a thunderstorm, such as hail, damaging winds, and severe turbulence, rather than the direct strike being the main threat.
• Pilots should view lightning as an immediate signal to avoid the associated weather systems by a safe distance (recommended 20-25 nautical miles), prioritizing detouring or landing to steer clear of hazardous storm conditions.

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