Lightning strike on BA jet strands passengers in Nassau

British Airways passengers on their way to Cayman were stranded in the Bahamas when lightning hit their jet as it approached Nassau on Friday, 10 Oct.

Paul Deegan, who was on the flight, said passengers, some with young children, were stuck in the airport for hours before they were told they would have to be booked into a hotel.

The BA flight from London was about 15 minutes from Nassau and had descended to about 6,000 feet when there was a flash and a loud bang.

Deegan added, “Basically, there was a lightning bolt which hit the plane and exited through the left engine.”

Although frightening, Deegan said the passengers did not panic.

“There were one or two little ‘ohs’, but that was it,” he said. “Everybody was quite calm and everybody we spoke to afterwards realised it was lightning.”

But he added he was surprised the plane had not been met by emergency vehicles when it landed.

Deegan said a BA employee later showed him pictures of the left wing and engine taken after it touched down.

He added, “There were holes in the engine about the size of a bottle top. About 20 of them.”

Deegan said the aircraft arrived at about 1:30pm local time and passengers, some of whom were travelling with babies and children, were not allowed to disembark for about three hours.

He said, “When we were taken off, we weren’t moved from the airport until 7:30pm. We got to the hotel at 8:30pm and people were still checking in at 1:30am.”

Deegan said, “It took five hours for British Airways to make the decision that the plane could not continue to Cayman.”

He added, “One look at these photographs of the plane, you could tell that plane wasn’t moving.”

He said the passengers were eventually offered KFC boxes at the airport, but the restaurant could only prepare 12 at a time, so it took hours to feed the passengers.

Deegan said, “This is a constant thing with BA. There is a lady on the plane and she was on a flight last year and didn’t get home for three-and-a-half days. That was a broken windshield.”

He added about 38 people, including himself, had been allocated empty seats on the Saturday BA flight from London to Cayman.

But he said that most of the passengers on the busy Friday flight would have to wait until 12 Oct. to be rerouted to Cayman through the US or wait until Monday for the next BA service.

“BA booked a lot of people through the States without checking they had visas,” he said.

“It’s the ground service here. It’s pathetic. There’s no organisation here. There’s one woman organising things.”

BA’s global communications manager Gareth Lund did not answer questions on whether there was any danger to passengers from the lightning strike, if the plane had been badly damaged and how common such events were.

The airline has not also responded to questions about the delays after the aircraft was grounded.

Lund said only, “We have provided customers with alternative flights after we were forced to cancel their original flight. We are very sorry for the disruption to their plans.”

The US National Weather Service’s website says every commercial aircraft was hit by lightning on average “one or two times a year”.

It says also that commercial planes were “designed and built to have conducting paths through the plane to take the lightning strike and conduct the currents” so passengers and electrical systems were protected.