i found this on a news aggregator website.

good job to the crew that got her down safely.

someone can correct me if I am wrong, since I am out of the loop, but I believe those pictures are from the fire they had at the gate on 830AS in TLH last month.

http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/re...-fire-tlh.html

Yea..lightning strikes do not look like that..that's most definitely a fire.

That was not a lightning strike. Rumor has it Mx left a wrench in the circuit breaker panel behind the captain. It shorted a bus bar and started a fire. The fire burned through an O2 line...instant blowtorch! Lucky it was on the ground.

99.99...% of the time, lightning strikes are a complete non-event. Your average airliner is struck once per year, and specifically designed to handle it without any major airframe, avionics, etc. failures. It happened to me in the Beech. No big deal, and the only evidence were small scorch marks on a few of the prop blades, and a very, very tiny scorch mark and pin sized hole near the rear of the aircraft, near the tail cone, aft of the pressure vessel. Air transportation would be THE MOST dangerous form of travel if that is what your average lightning strike did to an aircraft (in the picture).

Im in class on the 900 right now and we were shown slides on that particular aircraft and it is an o2 line that burst and melted the l/h fwd fuse behind the garment closet. the o2 bott is located on the on the l/h side of fwd entry door. They were not flying. it was before they were off the ground.

I've been in the Jumpseat of an MD-80 during a lightning strike.

It was a non-event. Just loud and a surprising. The captain used some very technical aviation terms that along the lines of "what the * was that?".

Maintenance checked the plane over on landing and found nothing.

They didn't even have pax on board yet. So other than being expensive, no big deal.

No, the pic linked in post #1 doesn't look anything like the ASA fire in TLH.

Here is the TLH pic - http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o...8093749000.jpg

Your picture looks like it was taken after they cut some metal away for repair or investigation. Same airplane.

A lightning strike could not do that kind of damage to a metal airplane...if it did, it would have killed the CA and probably killed or disabled the FO too. That hole would be the equivalent a 100mm+ artillery round hitting an armored vehicle. The only picture available would that of a smoking hole in a cornfield.