By Rick Durden, AVweb
A lightning strike that injured an air traffic controller at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport has exposed a potential vulnerability at air traffic control towers during storms. It has prompted Federal Aviation Administration officials to inspect hundreds of towers nationwide, according to the Associated Press. The FAA said in a statement that the accident was "the first of its kind in FAA history," and the agency plans on "assessing the condition" of lightning protection systems at the 440 air traffic control towers it is responsible for across the country. In particular, the agency said it will examine lightning protection at more than 200 towers that were built prior to 1978, when the FAA first issued standards for the protection systems.
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