Why aren’t planes affected by lightning if they are made of conductive metals?
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Mostly because they’re designed to handle lightning strikes.
But for one even though a plane is metal, it still has to be near an area where lightning would have struck anyway for the plane to provide a more conductive path and “attract” lighting. The plane itself doesn’t have enough mass to absorb the whole charge from a strike so on it’s own. Instead the strikes hit the plane on one side, then exit out the other to another cloud or to the ground.
As for protections the metal skin actually helps. Along with insulation, wire mesh, ground straps etc, the plane is designed so that current from a strike flows around the outside, away from electronics and passengers.
If the plane’s frame were less conductive the lighting would be more apt to flow through the interior.
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