Doomed Beirut flight 'blown to pieces by lightning'

The Scotsman ^ | 26 January 2010 | ALASTAIR DALTON

[-YYZ-]

Yeah, because aluminum-bodied planes always explode when struck by lightning. Uh huh, yeah. I’m not saying this is BS, but my detector is definitely picking up something.

[Solitar]

Something in these descriptions reminds me of Flight 800.

[buccaneer81]

Must have hit the dreaded center fuel tank...

/ big time sarc

[deadrock]

If a lightening bolt caused this, who would dare to fly again?

[null and void]

The Hebrew word for lightning is Barack...

[VicVega]

Thought it was the bra bomber.

[rdl6989]

Yes, why doesn’t this sort of thing happen all the time?

[Carley]

Two planes were struck by lightning in CA last week.

It’s not impossible. Both the planes were on the ground if I remember.

[Jack Hydrazine]

Airplanes! They just blow up so soon after take off these days!

[Candor7]

A fruit of the boom succeeds.

[BossLady]

Many people bought the whole Air France ‘lightning strike’ story so I guess when a plane goes down and ‘they’ do not want to tell the public it’s a bomb/terrorism/etc....they will now roll out the ‘lightning strike’ narrative....

[Da Coyote]

It’s take a lightning strike of biblical proportions to bring down a civilian airliner.

I smell something......

[rdl6989]

I smell something......

I think your nose is correct. Somebody on another thread last night posted the weather in the area at the time and it didn't seem too bad.

[PapaBear3625]

Physorg.com:

But technical experts, astounded like everyone else by the disappearance of an Air France jet in the Atlantic with the feared loss of 228 lives, say lightning alone could not have caused it to crash into the ocean.

Air France has said the A300-200 jet was probably hit by lightning as it passed through a violent storm on the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Monday.

But the airline's chief executive Pierre-Henry Gourgeon said it suffered multiple technical failures before falling off radar screens.

"A succession of a dozen technical messages" sent by the jet showed that "several electrical systems had broken down" which caused a "totally unprecedented situation in the plane," said Gourgeon.

...

Nearly every commercial pilot has a tale of coming through a lightning storm. The French national office for aerospace study and research (ONERA) says that on average a plane is hit by lightning every 1,000 hours.

I would classify this as suspicious until strong evidence to the contrary appears.

[DJ MacWoW]

Something in these descriptions reminds me of Flight 800.

Yup.

[Red_Devil 232]

FNC just showed a security cam vid that FNC says shows the aircraft just after taking off. There are two separate flashs of light from the aircraft itself that look like an engine flaming out and then the aircraft leaves the view of the camera and then a big bright flash is shown.

[Palladin]

Very reminiscent of TWA 800. Many similarities, but with a lesser loss of life.

[Southack]

The Lightening Surface To Air Missile (BARAK)

[buccaneer81]

Love your screen name!