Lightning strikes are fairly common in commercial airliners, and I could point you to a study that Boeing did that actually shows that lightning stroke initial attach points tend to be towards the front of the fuselage and engine nacelles, but during the brief course of lightning transmission they migrate backwards to a trailing edge before the stroke is depleted.  Wild stuff.  I believe that study was done in the 1980s involving a 737-300 series airframe, and I forget how they got the data (they did NOT go lightning-hunting in an airplane) but they did publish it in their safety magazine that's given out among their customer airlines.  

I've never been hit by lightning in a light plane but I flew very close to an incredibly active *dry* lighting storm at night halfway from El Paso to Dallas in a 310 and got St Elmo's Fire radiating from the prop tips and tip tanks.  Spooky-cool, it was purple-blue, very faint, and had no effect on the 1970s vintage avionics -- VORs, a DME, HSI, autopilot, ILS, ADF, RMI.


On Jan 20, 2012, at 8:42 AM, Andres Katz wrote:

I have been struck while flying twice, once it melted the lens on the iv-p and blew open the wing extension, the second time in a 737 landing in dfw,
Once in a million? I guess I am unlucky

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