Watch: A plane was hit by lightning shortly after takeoff
"I was wondering if they were going to have to divert," said the student pilot who captured the viral footage.
While modern planes are built to not just withstand an unexpected lightning strike but even fly in weather when thunder is likely, the idea of one's plane being hit by a lightning bolt is enough to put many laypeople off flying.
At the end of last week, a student pilot was watching planes take off from a park near Vancouver International Airport (YVR) and filmed the hair-raising moment when this occurred to an Air Canada (ACDVF) plane headed on a long transatlantic flight to London.
Related: A viral video captures just what pilots see during bad turbulence
The sixteen-second video, which shows a dramatic bolt of yellow and blue lightning hit the Boeing 777-300ER (BA) as it flies through a foggy sky, immediately went viral on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter and was viewed nearly 500,000 times since being posted on March 5.
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