Airplanes are designed to withstand lightning strikes, which are a common occurrence during flight. The fuselage and wings of an aircraft are designed to dissipate the electrical energy from a lightning strike, protecting the passengers and crew inside.

Although modern commercial aircraft are engineered to withstand lightning strikes through a principle known as the Faraday Cage—where the aluminum or composite skin with embedded copper mesh conducts the electricity around the exterior and back into the atmosphere—pilots still actively avoid it for several critical reasons. A strike can cause "static discharge" that temporarily interferes with sensitive avionics, radio communications, and navigation equipment. Furthermore, lightning is almost always an indicator of severe convective activity, meaning where there is lightning, there is likely intense turbulence, hail, and extreme wind shear. These meteorological conditions pose a much greater structural risk to the aircraft than the electricity itself. Additionally, a direct hit can cause minor physical damage, such as "pitting" or small holes in the fuselage or wingtips, which requires the airline to take the plane out of service for an expensive mandatory safety inspection. To ensure maximum passenger comfort and prevent operational delays, pilots use on-board weather radar to navigate around these high-energy storm cells whenever possible.