Thursday, September 4, 2014

IDIOT ALERT: Laser-Pointer Strikes Menace Pilots

People keep aiming powerful laser pointers at aircraft—where they can distract or even temporarily blind pilots and crew—despite jail sentences for offenders and rewards for people who turn them in.
The number of cases has climbed sharply since the middle of last decade. In 2013 there were nearly 4,000 laser strikes on aircraft, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, the highest annual number yet. So far this year the number is off slightly.
"People still don't understand how potentially dangerous this is," said Sean Cassidy, the first vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association, the union for Canadian and U.S.-based commercial airline pilots.
Starting about 10 years ago, pilots of aircraft of all sorts—commercial airliners, private planes, and police and medical helicopters—increasingly reported getting hit from the ground with concentrated beams of light, according to aviation and law-enforcement experts.
The beams usually come from inexpensive and readily available hand-held devices used as pointers by college professors and corporate presenters. Some cat owners amuse their pets by having them chase the red dots of light.
Law-enforcement experts and prosecutors say that most strikes arise not done out of maliciousness, but irresponsibility. Brett Lee Scott, a California man, told authorities that simple "boredom" prompted him to laser-strike two helicopters last year.
Pilots say that at thousands of feet away, the beam of light expands and often fills an entire cockpit. "It hits the windshield and just explodes," said Robert Hamilton, a commercial pilot who says he has been hit five times by lasers, including a strike nearly three years ago during an approach into Charlotte, N.C., that he says caused him to go momentarily blind.
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1 comment:

Unknown said...

I love the green laser pointer. I usually use a green laser to pop balloon, light matches, burn plastic etc, which can always bring me a lot of joy in my life.