I came across this video on YouTube, which has a lot of footage and goes into detail. The 787 pilot flew the plane into, or too near a thunderstorm, something that’s very forbidden in the aviation world because of lightning. Lightning struck the plane, causing the control surfaces on the wing to fail, which could’ve been catastrophic.
https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/494678 the report for this incident.
After this I heard there have been other Japanese airliners being struck by lightning because the pilots, for unknown reasons, flew into thunderstorms.
Is flying into thunderstorms not forbidden in Japanese aviation law? I’m pretty sure if a US or European pilot did this, they’d get their license revoked.
I’d say losing critical flight control surfaces on the wing isn’t “without issue”.
It’s a landing flap, not an aileron. All losing it is going to do is make it somewhat more difficult to land the plane.
It’s not a critical flight control surface, it’s a secondary control surface that adds extra lift at the cost of efficiency. Lightning is not inherently dangerous to airplanes. They are struck all the time, and it is fine besides alarming passengers and occasionally causing some minor concerns and repairs. Composite aircraft like the 787 need significant additional lightning protection though, this is a known risk for them, and Boeing intentionally decided to decline to lightning protect non-essential areas of the aircraft despite the potential for lightning damage, and that is a perfectly safe albeit probably financially and reputationally stupid decision.
For the aircraft, having slats stuck in either position is obviously not great and not having it available potentially limits the available landing options but it is not a safety issue. Efficiency concerns may result in the flight being unable to continue, but again, not a safety issue as they carry extra reserve fuel for unplanned contingencies like this and have alternate airports available to land at anywhere along their route. As a mechanical issue where a single incident cost the airline in question hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and delays and shuffling around other aircraft and flights to cover for the loss, it will be investigated and addressed if possible. But nothing unsafe happened here, except to ANA’s revenue. Inconvenient, frustrating, maybe even alarming, but not unsafe.
airplanes are struck by lightning all the time. They are designed against it, something wasn’t done right that caused the issue you are describing. A plane should not be effected by the strike to the point it’s no longer easily operational.
Being said, airlines try to avoid it when possible as it can lead to costly inspections and downtime to verify it’s still flight ready.
That’s one report. Every plane is hit on average once or twice a year, occasionally something minor will happen.
https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-planes
The anomaly isn’t that the plane was struck by lightning, it’s that it loose all control surfaces.
Thunderstorm can cause huge up/down draft + haze and therefore aren’t recommended even for airliner (which typically would need inspection after being stuck inside) but shit happens