"Ladies and gentlemen, you may have noticed we were hit by lightning," said the captain of a Boeing 737 after it safely touched down at Birmingham Airport. The passengers on board, who had lived through the ordeal on Friday, were a little less blasé.
Businessman Tony Everitt, 51, who was returning for a conference on the flight, said: "It was incredible - there was one massive bang. Only moments before, I’d noticed the dark skies and told a passenger sitting next to me that I was surprised there was no thunder and lightning.
"After the bang, my initial thought was the engine had blown-up. Surprisingly, it wasn’t frightening, it was exciting. Yu are waiting for something else to happen, then you realise nothing has gone wrong."
The KLM service was hit three times during its flight from Amsterdam, with each strike accompanied by a loud boom and a flash of light.
These incredible pictures of one of the strikes were taken by Tracy Meakin White, who stood transfixed by the storm with her camera. "I didn’t even see the plane at first, I was just clicking on my phone and then afterwards I saw the aircraft,” she said, “I think it is a once in a lifetime picture, I doubt I will see anything like that again, I am not a photographer, it was just a stroke of luck I got the shot."
A statement from KLM, read: "Occasionally an aircraft is hit multiple times by lightning. All pilots and air crew are trained to deal with this."