Air Malta plane hit by lightning

An Air Malta jet was struck by lightning just minutes before landing at Paris' Orly Airport on Sunday, but fortunately no one was injured in the incident.

The lightning bolt went straight through the plane's cabin, television presenter Norman Hamilton, who was on the flight, said.

When contacted by The Times, Mr Hamilton said that around 10 minutes before landing, the plane went into a thunderstorm, and a few minutes later it was hit by the lightning bolt.

Although passengers saw the lightning flashing through the plane, which lost altitude on impact, there was no panic.

"Everyone was calm, probably because we were all so shaken," Mr Hamilton said, adding that the most important thing was that the plane landed safely and nobody was injured. In fact, the plane landed at the scheduled time at Orly just five minutes after the strike.

Mr Hamilton was on his way to Paris together with a crew from the Saturday evening programme Bla Agenda to film a special edition of the programme. He said the majority of people on the aircraft were not Maltese.

A statement issued by Air Malta yesterday confirmed that the Airbus A320 was struck by lightning while in flight and that none of the passengers was injured.

Air Malta said that on landing, the plane's captain asked for technical assistance to check whether the plane was damaged. It resulted that the plane needed repair before returning to Malta. The flight back to Malta from Orly Airport on Sunday evening was cancelled, and passengers were accommodated at the Ibis Orly Hotel overnight.

Yesterday the passengers were transferred to Charles de Gaulle Airport from where they boarded a scheduled flight back to Malta.

Air Malta said an engineer is in Paris to supervise the necessary repairs. No estimate of the cost of the repairs has yet been made.