Friday, April 13, 2012

San Francisco International Airport Flights Resume; Lightning Strikes Plane

Despite the overnight downpour of rain and lightning, the San Francisco International Airport is open Friday morning and passengers should be expected to be able to fly to their destinations.

A flight bound for England Thursday night was forced to turn back Thursday night after lightning struck the body of the plane, but the London-bound flight is expected to take off Friday at 3 p.m.

Late Thursday night, NBC Bay Area's own Diane Dwyer was on a flight arriving at SFO from Frankfurt, when she reported that lightning hit her plane. "It was pretty spooky," she said.

Several passengers tweeted from their flights Thursday about the lightning. "Just had the scariest flight of my life," tweeted a passenger named Nathan Marz. "Two aborted landings in SFO and then finally landed in San Jose. Holy smokes."

The roads are wet Friday morning, and the California Highway Patrol log was full of accident reports. NBC Bay Area's Rob Mayeda reported that the National Weather Service detected at least 650 lightning strikes over the Bay Area through 2 a.m.

The weather is expected to clear up by Friday afternoon and be much sunnier by Saturday.

The San Francisco Giants home opening game begins at 1:30 p.m. Friday, rain or shine.

Some tweets from passengers:


Nathan Marz: Just had the scariest flight of my life. Two aborted landings in SFO and then finally landed in San Jose. Holy smokes.

Alan Yu: ‏ @bluefintoro Lightning hit plane. Loud bang. Screams. Oxygen masks. Screaming. Dumped fuel. Return SFO. No joke, even as 1M mile flyer, I was shook.

No comments:

Post a Comment