Passengers have spoken of their terror after the plane they were travelling in was struck by lightning above Wales. The ASL Airlines plane was flying from Ibiza to Cardiff on Wednesday afternoon when they entered a period of turbulence.
Having seemingly come through the worst, passengers say a "huge bang" shook the plane and left returning holidaymakers fearing for their lives, thousands of feet above the Vale of Glamorgan. Cath Emery, from Cwmparc in the Rhondda, who was returning from a holiday in Ibiza with her boyfriend, said: “We were about 30 minutes away from Cardiff when we entered a bit of turbulence.
“At that point we couldn’t really see anything out of the window because of the weather. Shortly after that, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, there was this huge bang. All the lights in the plane went off and I remember there was a baby sat near us who was crying.”
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Cath added: “I thought straight away that we were going to crash. I’m not a very good flyer anyway and I’ve never experienced anything like that before. My boyfriend flies far more regularly than I do but when it happened I looked at his face and he was in as much shock as I was. We all saw this flash of light outside and people started to realise what had happened: we’d been struck by lightning.”
The flight landed successfully at Cardiff Airport, with no reported injuries. However, that was only after considerable panic inside the aircraft. If you're a nervous flyer, you should read these answers given by a pilot to questions all plane passengers have.
Another passenger on-board the plane - which was an ASL airlines aircraft flying TUI holidaymakers home - was Paula Freeman from Tenby. She said: “We were flying above Penarth so we weren’t far from coming into land in Cardiff, and then there was this massive bang and then a flash of light.
“People were just shocked. We didn’t know what had happened at first and there were a lot of gasps from passengers when the bang happened. We thought one of the engines had blown out. It was so frightening and luckily we were landing soon after. I’ve flown lots of times and nothing like this has ever happened before.”
WalesOnline reporter Karen Price was also on board the flight on Wednesday. She said there was no panic on the plane and that all the passengers remained calm after the incident. Karen said: "I heard a bang and I said to my partner 'what was that?'
"Everyone was very calm, there were no shouts or screams. The pilot warned us that we would be entering some turbulence and he spoke to us again after the incident. The plane was in total control and everyone I was near seemed pretty calm."
Passengers said that a few minutes after the lightning struck, the pilot came on to the public address system and confirmed that the plane had just been struck by lightning. The plane then continued its descent and landed without incident at Cardiff Airport at 12.50pm. Get the latest headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for our daily newsletter here.
A spokeswoman for TUI said: "We can confirm that on flight TOM6371 from Ibiza to Cardiff yesterday, the aircraft suffered a lightning strike. The aircraft was not damaged in any way and was completely safe to land as normal. The safety of our passengers and crew was not compromised and always remains our highest priority."
ASL Airlines confirmed that an examination of the aircraft after it landed did not reveal any damage and that the aircraft has now returned to service.
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