Ball Lightning Inside an Aircraft — The R.C. Jennison Observation (1969)

In March 1969, Professor Roger C. Jennison of the Electronics Laboratory at the University of Kent witnessed ball lightning under extraordinary circumstances: inside an aircraft cabin during a nighttime flight from New York to Washington, D.C. aboard an Eastern Airlines flight. Jennison, a physicist specializing in radio astronomy, reported that during a thunderstorm, a glowing sphere approximately 22 centimeters in diameter emerged from the cockpit area and traveled slowly down the center aisle of the aircraft at roughly walking pace, passing within half a meter of him. The sphere appeared solid, luminous, and slightly blue-white in color, with well-defined edges. It made no sound and did not appear to interact with the aircraft's interior or passengers before exiting through the rear of the cabin. As a trained physicist, Jennison was able to provide an unusually precise and reliable account, including estimates of the sphere's size, luminosity, speed, and duration (approximately 3-5 seconds of observation time). His report, published in the scientific journal Nature, became one of the most cited eyewitness accounts of ball lightning in the scientific literature.