Is there a sudden danger of lightning and thunder when flying?

In recent years, frequent plane accidents have aroused people's fear of flying. Especially in special weather, people will worry about what will happen to the plane. There are many thunderstorms in summer, so will thunderstorms affect the plane? Is it dangerous to fly in thunderstorm weather? Let's learn about the impact of thunderstorms on airplanes. The flight may be delayed.

Although the altitude of the plane after takeoff is higher than that of the thunderstorm cloud, it is very dangerous for the plane to fly in the thunderstorm when it is struck by lightning, which often leads to the interruption of radio communication or the damage of equipment, the interference of electronic equipment and the magnetization of compass and other components, which seriously affects the communication, orientation and navigation of the plane. Lightning will also make the fuselage induction charged, causing landing discharge danger. Lightning will also destroy the ground navigation facilities and affect the ground lighting effect. Thunderstorm is an extreme weather phenomenon under extremely unstable air conditions. Ordinary precipitation generally affects the visibility and cloud bottom height of the airport, but thunderstorm weather will not only cause low visibility and cloud height, but also cause severe weather phenomena such as lightning, strong wind and heavy precipitation, wind shear and strong turbulence, which seriously threatens flight safety.

Lightning may damage the fuselage, affect the normal work of radio communication and cockpit electronic equipment in flight, and further affect the positioning and navigation of aircraft; Strong winds and heavy rainfall will lead to a sudden drop in visibility, which is lower than the operating standard. If it happens in the landing phase, it will lead to unstable landing attitude of the aircraft, and may even lead to deviation from the runway. The instability of airflow caused by thunderstorm will cause low-altitude wind shear, which may lead to the sudden increase or decrease of landing space-time speed and the sudden rise or fall of aircraft fuselage, which will seriously affect flight control.

In addition to the thunderstorm weather at the airport, the flight operation will be affected, and the route weather of the flight route will also affect passengers' travel. When the route cannot be used normally due to thunderstorm, pilots generally use route bypass to avoid danger; When the route is covered by a large area of thunderstorm and it is difficult to detour, for the sake of safety, airlines usually postpone flights and wait for the weather to improve.