Environment Canada had warned of a risk of thunderstorms Tuesday morning when a Helijet S-76 Sikorsky helicopter flying between Vancouver and Victoria was struck by lightning.
The helicopter, with two pilots and 12 passengers, landed safely in Victoria after descending through 3,000 feet of clouds without instruments.
Meteorologist Armel Castellan said Wednesday that Environment Canada produces two aviation forecasts, including one specifically for small planes and helicopters on lower-elevation flights on the B.C. coast.
“Both of those products had the thunderstorm icon on it, the description saying isolated cumulonimbus, a fancy word for thunderstorms, was present in the area,” said Castellan.
The thunderstorm activity was over Vancouver Island and most of the south coast, including the Sunshine Coast, he said.
“The whole area from Vancouver to Victoria was included in the thunderstorm potential there,” said Castellan. “There had been a lightning strike near Bellingham about an hour earlier. That was in our geographical forecast, too.”
After the incident Tuesday, Helijet chief executive officer Daniel Sitnam said the weather was fine and there was no information or statements that there was lightning or electricity in the air.
Castellan said lightning activity is very different in Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and other interior locations than it is on B.C.’s coast.
The coast tends to have more larger-scale thunderstorms in winter, but they’re not as noticeable because they’re embedded in larger cloud systems, which makes them more muffled and less visible, he said.
“We get lightning all year long. Bigger storms, like the one we saw yesterday, are no exception.”
The pilots reported hearing a loud bang and seeing a white light as they flew in the clouds over Haro Strait.
They continued to fly but soon after lost the instrumentation in their cockpit. Further investigation revealed that the helicopter had lost two of its four tail rotor blades in the lightning strike.
Passenger Jason Craik told Global News that 15 or 20 minutes after takeoff, he heard “a massive boom and a giant flash that seemed like it was coming from the cockpit behind the panel, like some sort of electrical short, and then some rough machinery noises and a change in tone in the engine.”
It felt as if the helicopter was spiralling down to the ground at a rapid pace, but because they were socked in by clouds, it was hard to tell what was left or right and what was going on, said Craik.
“The rapid descent was almost like a weightless feeling. … A lot of us thought that was it,” said Craik, who texted his partner during the terrifying descent.
It seemed like a miracle, he said, when the helicopter came through the clouds and the pilot landed the aircraft safely.
The lightning strike is being investigated by the Transportation Safety Board, which did not respond to a request for information Wednesday.
Chris Shannon, department head of the aircraft maintenance engineer program at the B.C. Institute of Technology, said passengers on commercial airlines don’t need to worry about lightning strikes, since airplanes are designed to withstand and absorb them with minimal damage.
The aluminum structure is conductive, so electricity flows through them, said Shannon, adding lightning strikes happen more frequently than people think.
“The composites are made with a conductive lamination. And in some airplanes, even the paint is conductive. What that does is conduct electricity from a point of entry to a safe exit point.”
The electronics on board have to meet certain standards, including surge protection so they are less likely to get damaged by a lightning strike, said Shannon.
