Bang!

When you travel extensively, you become accustomed to the routine of flying. You snag your window seat, unpack your kit of ipod, neck pillow, and water bottle, and then get down to the serious business of ignoring the flight attendent's safety instructions. As a person to whom American Airlines once sent christmas cookies, I am the classic seasoned traveller. However, I had a first yesterday, descending through the somewhat inclement cloud cover over Sydney. As I looked out the window to see if I could get a glimpse of the city, I instead got to watch the wing of the plane get hit by lightning (accompanied by a loud CRACK, which is the last noise you ever want to hear on a plane). Now the startling thing in retrospect was that this was completely non-terrifying. The event ended before I could really process what had happened, and absolutely nothing happened to the plane. Lights didn't dim, movie didn't stop, oxygen masks didn't drop. Yeah, there was a bit of screaming, but it didn't really seem necessary as we showed no signs of plummeting out of the sky. Like running into birds, this is clearly something that planes are designed to cope with.