Quote:

QUOTE:
That's because planes are hit with lightning all the time - even got a name for the effect, "St Elmo's Fire".".

St. Elmo's Fire is a continuous coronal discharge or plasma. I have witnessed it numerous times when flying through fine snow aloft at night. It is an eerie effect especially when it seemed to emanate from my fingers as I held them close to the instrument panel or another metallic surface.

Quote:

QUOTE:Has a plane ever been damaged by ice in a thunder storm? If you get golf ball sized hail from thunder storms then that ice of that size is present in the storm being taken up by the updraft. I imagine a plane meeting large pieces of updraft or falling ice travelling at a decent speed could suffer.

Numerous times. As an example, I looked for a photo of an Air Tran DC9 that got pounded by hail and had to make an emergency landing in Chattanooga. The images have been removed from Internet servers!