On May 7, 2024, JAL and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) announced that on April 2, 2024, they signed an agreement to deploy Lilac, a jointly-developed lighting strike avoidance decision support system, at airports in Japan.
Lilac uses the Japan Meteorological Agency’s data to predict potential lighting strike locations. The forecast is then delivered to JAL’s operations center, where it can be passed on to pilots. In addition to generating a regular map, the system also generates an ASCII-art-based map which can be easily transmitted onboard aircraft in flight using ACARS, an existing text-based aircraft-ground communication technology.
With most lighting strikes occurring during take-off and landing, the two companies hope the system will minimize the risk by allowing pilots to make better-informed decisions about, for example, which arrival route to take. The companies highlighted winter lighting strikes, which can occur along the Sea of Japan coast and are not only more difficult to identify using regular weather radar but also multiple times stronger than regular summer lighting strikes.
JAL and MHI are implementing the system at a time when an increasingly higher proportion of flights is operated using aircraft made of carbon fiber composites. According to the press release, “in particular, the repair process for Boeing 787s and Airbus A350s … is complex and takes a long time to complete.”
