Are airplanes safe from lightning strikes?

Question

How protected are airplanes from lightning strikes, and what measures are in place to enhance this?

Answer 1

Airplanes can be built in such a way that whenever lightning strikes, it never gets damaged. The plane goes through several testing processes to ascertain its overall conductivity; this way, if the aircraft is struck by lightning, the lightning will follow the body of the plane and return to the sky. Because of this, lightning strikes are not so much as dangerous as they appear; also, those within the cabin are often safe from the worst of the effects.

Comments

Don't let that scare you, pilots usually land blind because, what's more effective; windows that are angled up so you can't really see the runway somewhat close to the front of the plane (due to the plane needing to be aerodynamic), or some several thousand dollar instruments designed specifically for landing?

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For boarding though if you have a carry-on it does make sense to board earlier than later especially if your carry-on cannot go in the cargo hold but more importantly because bin space is not guaranteed except maybe in certain cases (like first and business class).

I believe SSSS can also be assigned randomly too as well, as I've had it once but at the time, I only flew maybe once a year and did things normally (booked online, paid with a CC, no issues, etc).  So it can also be done randomly to ensure additional security.

For the lightning thing, the way people are generally killed or hurt by lightning is because there is a ground (and standing on the ground is enough).  So while in the air, if the plane is designed correctly, lightning strikes will not harm passengers like it would if you got struck while on the ground or standing on something that is touching the ground and where the electricity can get to the ground.

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The lightning strike works like this - there is an electrical thing called a "Faraday's Cage", which essentially means the electrons push to the outer shell of the airplane. As we all (should) know, opposite charges attract and like charges repel each other. The stronger the charge, the greater the effect. Mankind has been able to create massively high charges which is cool, but we still cannot create a charge anywhere near a real lightning strike, but with the extremely high charge, the electrons push against each other enough that they ride on the outer shell, or the outer cage of whatever is struck. The same thing works for when a car is struck by lightning or when a power line lays across a car after an accident. So long as you are inside the car and not touching the ground, you should be safe. Then the rescue squad or fire department can throw a rope with weights on each end to remove the wire without touching it.