Lightning NOx production is one of the most important and most uncertain sources of reactive nitrogen in the atmosphere. To examine the role of NOx lightning production uncertainties in supersonic aircraft assessment studies, we have done a number of numerical calculations with the State University of New York at Stony Brook-Russian State Hydrometeorological Institute of Saint-Petersburg two-dimensional model. The amount of nitrogen oxides produced by lightning discharges was varied within its quoted uncertainty from 2 to 12 Tg N/yr. Different latitudinal, altitudinal, and seasonal distributions of lightning NOx production were considered. Results of these model calculations show that the assessment of supersonic aircraft impacts on the ozone layer is very sensitive to the strength of NOx production from lightning. The high-speed civil transport produced NOx leads to positive column ozone changes for lightning NOx production less than 4 Tg N/yr, and to total ozone decrease for lightning NOx production more than 5 Tg N/yr for the same NOx emission scenario. For large lightning production the ozone response is mostly decreasing with increasing emission index, while for low lightning production the ozone response is mostly increasing with increasing emission index. Uncertainties in the global lightning NOx production strength may lead to uncertainties in column ozone up to 4%. The uncertainties due to neglecting the seasonal variations of the lightning NOx production and its simplified latitude distribution are about 2 times less (1.5--2%). The type of altitude distribution for the lightning NOx production does not significally impact the column ozone, but is very important for the assessment studies of aircraft perturbations of atmospheric ozone. Increased global lightning NOx production causes increased total ozone, but for assessment of the column ozone response to supersonic aircraft emissions, the increase of lightning NOx production leads to column ozone decreases in response to aircraft emissions. ¿ 1999 American Geophysical Union