We were between Honolulu and Anchorage, and “Pete’s Dragon” opening music was starting. Then POW! Huge bang and the plane (DC10) shuddered, and began to descend quickly. Total silence. Everyone had a terrified look on their faces.
We asked the attendants what that bang was. “I didn’t hear anything.” 🙄
Then the plane evened out and made a 180 turn. Nobody told us ANYTHING for about a half hour. That was the worst part — not having information. We assumed we’d be in the drink soon.
We had lost an engine and had to return to HI because were about five minutes short of the half-way point. I guess that was policy then (the ‘80s) — to go to the closest airport.
You could hear a pin drop on our flight but we didn’t lose altitude. We circled over Omaha for another 30-45 minutes because they were having ice storms below us and they turned us back to Minneapolis. Got to Minn. got off the plane onto another and we were back in Omaha an hour later.
I worked with some ex-military who flew missions over South America and they’d tell stories of lightning strikes and watching it travel down the skin of the aircraft since they didn’t have the lining that commercial aircraft has.