Lightning bolt strikes plane on runway

ATLANTA, Georgia: A terrifying moment of a lightning bolt striking a Delta plane on the runway at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport has been captured by a flier and is available on YouTube. The footage was filmed by Jack Perkins, a passenger on a separate plane that was one among many grounded because of bad weather. He was filming the line of planes waiting to take off when lightning struck one of them. The video has already hit more than a million views on YouTube. According to reports, there were about 111 passengers and six crew members on board the Las Vegas-bound flight, none of whom were injured in the lightning strike. However, one look at the video below is enough to scare even the most confident flyer. “While filming the line of planes all stacked up during a ground hold in Atlanta on 8/18/15 I happened to capture this direct lightning strike on a 737,” wrote a YouTube poster by the name of Jack Perkins. He posted the video on Wednesday. Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant confirmed that lightning struck Las Vegas-bound Delta Flight 67 on Tuesday, as the Boeing 737-900R aircraft was in the takeoff queue in Atlanta. “As with any event involving aircraft, Delta is doing a thorough investigation of the circumstances around this flight as safety is always Delta’s top priority,” Durrant wrote in an email. “Aircraft design allows lightning bolts to be safely redirected,” Durrant wrote. -arabnews