‘A deafening bang tore through the cockpit’

In a ten-seater, weight and balance isn’t a paperwork formality. It’s physics. And physics always wins. After much negotiation, we reduced the bags, adjusted the fuel, and got away from Sydney on Runway 16R, tucked between aircraft ten times our size.

Cooma was calm, crisp, uneventful. I offloaded the family, refuelled, checked the weather and prepared for the dusk return to Bankstown. Cooma adds a unique twist to pre-takeoff checks: kangaroos. I taxied the length of the runway twice to clear them. A Roo-Strike would have been the worst possible opening act for my night flight home.

Night flying has always been a favourite of mine. The stars sharpen, the radios quieten, and coastal thunderstorms put on shows of light behind the clouds. At 9,000 feet the air was calm and the route was one I knew intimately. I’d made it a point early in my career to avoid the complacency of always following the same magenta line. Instead, I learned the terrain, the landmarks, the frequencies, the safe altitudes. The Great Dividing Range became a familiar companion.

Ahead, Sydney’s glow edged the horizon. A single thin band of cloud sat across my path. The radar showed nothing notable. A harmless wisp in an otherwise clear night.

I entered the cloud.

A deafening bang tore through the cockpit.

Every instrument went black. The radios died. The cabin plunged into darkness.

For a moment the only light in the world was the violent blue-violet crackle of St Elmo’s fire crawling across the windscreen, alive and reaching like a giant electrical spiderweb. The turbulence threw the aircraft as the autopilot disconnected. I gripped the controls and forced my eyes back to the imaginary horizon.

Training took over. Fly the aircraft. Check for immediate threats. Think.

The Chieftain was still flying. The instruments were not.

Unless you’re on fire, out of fuel, or missing a wing, you usually have time in an airborne emergency. You have until the fuel runs out. I knew my heading, my approximate position and my altitude before the strike. With no pressurisation, climbing above the weather wasn’t an option. So I held my heading, held my altitude and waited for the chance to get out of the cloud.

Unsure whether the radio was functioning, I set the transponder to 7600, the radio failure code. We memorise them with a rhyme: seventy-seven going to heaven, seventy-six radio tricks, seventy-five staying alive. What I didn’t know then was that 7600 triggers a nationwide alert. Every Air Traffic Controller in Australia suddenly knew a pilot was flying blind.

I transmitted blind on every frequency available, including 121.50, the emergency channel. I announced my intention to descend, my best estimate of position, my heading, and all the information I would have given if someone had responded. No ATIS on my mobile. No guidance. No confirmation. Just black instruments, turbulence and the glow of electrical fire crawling across the windscreen.

The cloud finally spat me out above Camden. Not where I expected to be, but above safe terrain with space to think. That was enough.

From here I knew my path home. I continued making blind calls, scanning for traffic, hand-flying every bump until Bankstown appeared beneath me. No instruments. No radio confirmation. No second pilot. Just discipline and muscle memory.

I overflew the field, checked for traffic, turned onto final and put the Chieftain on the runway with the kind of landing you never brag about because it wasn’t about finesse. It was about relief.

Only once the wheels stopped rolling did the adrenaline give way to the realisation: that was too close.

The police car arrived before I’d even shut down. Lights flashing. The officer jogged over. “You need to cancel your SAR watch!”

“I’m clearly here,” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied, “but they need you to call.”

I phoned the number and the operator promptly scolded me: “You shouldn’t use the 7600 code unless it’s necessary.”

“It was necessary,” I said. “I was in controlled airspace with no instruments.”

After the paperwork came the quiet truth: this aircraft had reached its limits for me. No pressurisation meant no climbing above weather. Single-pilot operations meant no second set of hands or eyes in chaos. I needed bigger aircraft, more capability, and someone in the other seat.

But that night also gave me something permanent. Without realising it, I followed a pattern I would later formalise as SOAR.

Stop: breathe, resist panic.

Observe: assess position, timing, fuel, weather.

Adjust: descend safely without instruments.

Rise: use skill, knowledge and mental discipline to bring the aircraft (and myself), home.

A lightning strike is dramatic. It’s violent. It’s sensory overload. But what stays with you isn’t the flash or the noise. It’s the silence right after, when everything goes dark and you’re alone with your training.

This article is an adapted excerpt from the chapter “Lightning Is Scary” in Lady MacGyver by Michelle Huntington, published by Ginninderra Press.