Re: Lightning and whatnot... (Petra...Lowell...you might B interested)
Posted by 2cents on March 18, 2002 at 20:46:39:

Hey Kate...very concise. Now for some rampant OT speculations. No flame outs so the roll to the right could have been caused by possibly one of the following:
1) Electrical noise disturbance to flight control (if it has an electrical interface). The puzzle is that noise filters should squash lots of the lightning noise signals (one would guess).
2) The boom noise scared the bejeebies (or ?)out of the pilot causing him to steer the roll to the right...before recovering his composure and correcting the situation.
3)If it was a lightning discharge it somehow caused a loss of lift by instantaneously disrupting the air flow (or pressure) across the right wing. How ? Hmmm...more speculation needed. Maybe the temperature of the air changed suddenly causing a density change.
4) The right engine didn't flame out but burped...causing a drop in RPMs...and right roll...? (Looking at the engine outputs during this event would be required.)
5) The de-icing agent (alchohol and flammable) froze itself but as the jet climbed in altitude it liquified en masse and rolled into the hot jet wash where it ignited explosively causing a back-pressure to the right engine causing it to belch (or burp ...ur choice). This caused the boom and roll... Ta da....
6) Other TBD (or rather mentioned later).

There's a video on the 'net somewhere of an airliner getting zapped pretty good by lightning (in Japan I think). As far as I can remember there was no flight deviation to the aircraft as a result.

I'm guessing that if they did a full investigation (by checking the flight recorder if it didn't get fried) that they just may turn up a true puzzle. Though I could believe that it is so much easier to write it off as a lightning strike and close the case on it (real tidy and all). Or #5 seem appealing if you can get de-icer to freeze too...

In any case, I believe that you have indeed escaped this event with just a "bullet burn". I also believe that what happened will happen again (and will likely get written up as a lightning strike as well).

Enjoy the Day eh?
.02



Follow Ups:
     ● Re: Lightning and whatnot...  - Kate  08:59:24 - 3/21/2002  (13966)  (0)