I don’t know if I’d term the following a ‘bad’ experience on an airplane but it was certainly a frightening experience. When I was growing up in Las Vegas, Nevada, I had grandparents that lived in Salt Lake City, Utah and my family would fly up there a few times a year to visit them. One year on the trip up and nearing our final descent into the airport at Salt Lake City, there was a brilliant flash of light outside the aircraft windows and the aircraft got a very strong shake like it went through a shock wave or something. It scared the hell out of a lot of people on the jet, myself and my family included. Once on the ground and as we were exiting the aircraft, the pilot told us that the nose of the plane had sustained a direct hit from a lightning bolt which accounted for the bright light and shaking. In those days, there weren’t jetways to the terminals and we had to exit the plane using airstairs. My brothers and I were able to get a glance at the nose of the aircraft and there were two holes in the nose about the size of softballs that were caused by the lightning. We couldn’t believe it.