Lightning Protection of Airport Runway

The runway of an international airport on the west coast of India was struck by lightning three times in succession at the rate of once every year. On two occasions the runway proper was damaged, and on the third the road around the periphery of the runway was cracked and a coconut tree burnt. A part of the runway was built on an embankment of a height varying from $30\text{to}40\mathrm{m}$ , and the periphery road was close to the embankment. The strategic importance of the runway and the fact that the vegetation around the embankment provided a sacrificial protection led to making a study of the cause of the problem of lightning strike and working out a solution. That solution consisted of providing suitable lightning protection conforming to international and national standards for the runway, incidentally providing natural lightning protection using tall trees with good biomass for the root system. The problems confronting the airport authorities and the solution to those problems are presented in this paper.