Lightning vs. the Weather Radar.
Recently, an A320 on a sister airline was struck by lightning and had its weather radar knocked out. Luckily they had system 2 to fall back on and operations were unaffected.
At this point I realized that our fleet of A320s only has one weather radar system available as management was too cheap to install two when ordering the aircraft from Airbus. Minimum Equipment List says that one weather radar system is all you need, even when dispatching for an ETOPS flight.
Now the scary bit... You're flying ETOPS over the Ocean on a particularly cloudy and moonless night and your one weather radar fails. By the weather report at dispatch, it's supposed to be a right mess with build ups all over the place that you now cannot see. Nearest airport is hundreds of miles away. What would you do?
Has anyone had this experience or faced something simliar? Care to shed some light on what a company procedure for this might look like? And please don't say avoid the flashes.