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Old 28th Jan 2019, 12:46
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LHR landing: going up in stacks after lightning

Hi everyone!
I experienced a very disturbing flight as a PAX into LHR yesterday.
Coming from the European continent, the A320 Neo descended into very dark clouds over London. We were struck by lightning (loud bang) which I believe I could see out the widow hitting the right wing. At this point we were at just over 800meters hight.
The pilot immediately revved up the engines and "jerked" the plane up to 1400 meters. It felt like it was flying irradically for a while with lots of powerful moves which made me feel all the Gforces.
Pilot then announced that it was a lightning strike and that Heathrow was too busy to let us land. We would try again in 5 minutes.
The 5 minutes felt like a real struggle (PAX perception obviously).
We finally re-started a straight descent into LHR and landed with windshears etc but safely. The cabin crew with over 20 years experience seemed utterly disturbed upon landing. So was I.

I have worked as cabin crew for years and although I have experienced lightning, I have never experienced such a strange sudden increase in speed and problematic approach.
Any ideas what could have been the issue? Would ATC at LHR really instruct to go up in the stacks? The clouds were just as bad at the other flight level.
Here is the tracking for the flight: https://fr.flightaware.com/live/flig...310Z/EDDF/EGLL
Thanks!!

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