[Skybird]

Golden Rivet,

as a rule of thumb, pilots and engineers calculate one lightning strike per 1000 flight hours. Another rule of thumb says that each airliner is hit at least 1-2 times per year.

That means each day, wordwide, probably dozens of planes get hit by lightning. Even parked planes get hit, with their tyres on the ground and being in close proximity to it. But when was the last time you heared that a parked plane went up due to lightning? And how many planes do fall out of the air because of it? A lightning strike usually does leave only cosmetical traces on an airplane. Many flights near the equator have to deal with thunderstorms that usually are several times as strong than what can be seen in europe, becasue they are a quite common thing in that region, especially over the ocean. If things like what you picture say were the rules inc ase of lightning stikres, then there must be several times as many air desasters as there actually are. therefore it would be interesting to see the exact circumstance of that lighting causing the damage in that picture. that polanes get struck by lightning is no unusual thing. And mostly, passangers do not even notice it.

The heavy winds and turbulences inside a heavy weather zone like the one the AF flight fas trying to sneak thourhg, can be easily underestimated, and they can shake an airframe so violently, that I find it much easier to imagine that structural damage occured due to such violent pushing and shaking. It can cause material (structure, surface) to break, and it can make hydraulic as well as electric wires breaking, too.

This does not mean that the plane was not hit by a lightning. But it means seen from a statistical perspective probably much more was happening to the airplane. I still see turbulences as the most likely cause for catastrophic damage appearing onboard the plane. tjhat storm front was more than a 1000 km wide and 18 km high, and the passage the weather satellites showed between two centres, had disappeared and united to one giant front at the time the AF flight was passing the area where before that passage was.

But all this is pub talking only. We simply do not know fopr sure what happened. The Brazilians say the Atlantic is 4-6 thousand meters deep where the Blackbox likely was buried, and there are strong currents as well. At 6 thousand meters it is even quersitonable that the radio signal of the box will reach the surface. And when it stops sending in a month or so, and has not been found until then, then it'S over. And even if it is being located, it is no certainty that diving robots will get it up.

Researchers will need plenty of luck to solve this puzzle. It is possible that they succeed, but I don't hold my breath.