How to do this dictation
Listen to the recording as many times as you need. Six sentences that describe the incident are shown below in the wrong order. Use what you hear to number them from 1 to 6 in the correct sequence. When you are finished, check your answers against the transcript and the answer key below.
Before you listen — key vocabulary
These words and phrases appear in the recording. Knowing them before you listen will help you catch every word:
| radome (noun) | The nose cone of an aircraft made from a radar-transparent material, protecting the weather radar antenna inside; short for “radar dome”. |
| weather radar (noun phrase) | An onboard system that detects precipitation and turbulence ahead of the aircraft, shown as coloured areas on the flight deck screen. |
| Pan Pan (phrase) | The international urgency signal, used when a crew needs immediate assistance but the situation is not immediately life-threatening. |
| storm cell (noun phrase) | A localised area of intense convective activity, typically producing lightning, heavy rain, and severe turbulence. |
Your dictation task
The six sentences below tell the story of the incident, but they are in the wrong order. Listen to the recording and number them from 1 to 6 to match the sequence you hear.
- _____ After a safe landing, engineers inspected the aircraft on stand and confirmed significant damage to the radome.
- _____ Air traffic control gave the crew a direct track to final approach to keep them clear of the storm cell.
- _____ The captain declared a Pan Pan and requested priority handling from Frankfurt Approach.
- _____ Descending on approach to Frankfurt Airport, a Lufthansa Airbus A319 was passing through ten thousand feet when lightning struck the nose of the aircraft.
- _____ The flight was taken out of service for repairs.
- _____ The flash caused the weather radar to fail instantly and the cabin lights flickered for several seconds.
Speaking follow-up
You are the first officer on this flight. After landing, a fellow pilot asks what happened during the approach. Describe the lightning strike, how the crew responded, and what the engineers found after the inspection.
Record yourself on a phone voice memo so you can play it back and self-review. There’s no single right answer — the goal is to produce a clear, structured response under time pressure.
Level: CEFR B1 / ICAO Level 4
Lightning strikes are one of the most common non-routine events in commercial aviation — hear how a challenging approach in bad weather unfolds in Listening: Turbulent Approach to Dublin.