I just saw a note posted on Facebook by a former Arkansas Times colleague. I haven’t run down the airline and flight number yet (and have to leave now for the evening), but it sounds like a harrowing experience on a flight out of Little Rock this afternoon.
On a flight out of Little Rock today, took off and immediately got into a storm, rain, hail, turbulence from hell, dropped about 20 feet straight down, blown from side to side, then struck by lightning……wing I was sitting at zapped, window behind me broken!!!! Redirected flight to Kansas City, pilot said they need to reevaluate…… You think? Thank you to all above for keeping us above!
The WHOLE plane is in the bar, could see the plane from the bar, big hole where the lightning hit. All the ground crew standing around shaking their heads!!!!!
Anybody with additional info, please chip in.
UPDATE: More from Jody Langley, who was on the Frontier flight to Denver. She posted photo of cracked windscreen on her Facebook account and wrote:
My husband and I were on the Frontier flight. We were told it was hit by lightning twice, along with the wind and hail. The pilot told us the the wind screen was cracked and that we wouldn’t be able to reach the normal altitude of over 30,000 ft. We were flying at 22000 ft. We didn’t have enough fuel to reach Denver so we landed in Kansas City. It was quite scary. We were also told by the flight attendants that there were 2 flights in front of us that didn’t hit any bad weather. Other people on flight said there was a hole in one of the wings.
The plane was all over the place, but props to the pilots for getting us through it and the flight attendants who were awesome.