Originally Posted by
shamen123
There has been speculation lightning can cause the airbus composites to fail. Could this be an indication of such?
It's more likely an indication of what lightning can do to a relatively unprotected piece of CF structure. I suspect that the winglets are not defined as primary structure and thus are not as well protected with, say, metallic mesh, as other components may be. Because it's already been determined that the aircraft can be flown safely with one missing. (Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised to find that a missing winglet is permitted on the CDL with the associated perf penalties).
I wouldn't assume from this that a piece of primary structure would suffer comparable damage from a comparable strike.