A Virgin Atlantic flight from London's Heathrow Airport destined for New York was forced to return following a "laser beam incident":
A flight heading to New York turned back to London Heathrow Airport after a "laser beam incident", Virgin Atlantic has confirmed. A crew member is recorded saying to Irish air traffic control that they had a "medical issue with one of the pilots after a laser incident after take-off". It happened at 20:13 GMT, shortly after take-off, the company said, before flight VS025 returned as a precaution. There were 252 passengers and 15 crew on board. Metropolitan Police tweeted: "Aircraft forced to return to Heathrow after being hit by a laser strike... #laserstrike CAD4."
[...] A new law introduced in 2010 means people could be charged with "shining a light at an aircraft in flight so as to dazzle the pilot".
Janet Alexander, a commercial airline pilot, said shining a laser beam into a cockpit was a very dangerous thing to do. "It's unfortunately becoming an increasingly problematic occurrence. It's very like a lightning strike in that it's very instantaneous, very, very bright light, which is dazzling basically," she said. "And of course if it's targeted in exactly the wrong way you could permanently damage someone's sight."
A total of 414 "laser incidents" in the UK were reported to the Civil Aviation Authority between January and June 2015. The highest number of them was at London Heathrow Airport - 48 were reported during this period. In 2014, there were 1,440 incidents in the UK, with 168 at Heathrow, according to the CAA.
The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) has called for lasers to be classified as "offensive weapons" and banned in the UK, following the Virgin Atlantic flight VS025 laser incident. Members cite the frequency of laser incidents and say the 2010 legislation on lasers isn't tough enough.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 18 2016, @04:52PM
I hear 25 mW green lasers (or is it 100 mW?) are good for pointing at stars. Better get them before they are banned. Anybody use these?
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(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 18 2016, @04:57PM
Mine is only 50 megawatt. :^(
(Score: 1) by Some call me Tim on Thursday February 18 2016, @10:13PM
When life gives you a 50 Megawatt laser, the smart thing to do is make popcorn. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_89 [imdb.com]
Questioning science is how you do science!
(Score: 2) by elgrantrolo on Thursday February 18 2016, @05:12PM
woah, that might get us into even bigger trouble than airplanes crashing.
Didn't you see how this film started? (it was a really bad film, skip it you have the choice)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440129/ [imdb.com]
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday February 18 2016, @11:12PM
Oh god! That film! I just had to watch it at least once to see how on earth somebody makes a movie out of a board game about naval battles and somehow involves aliens. I would recommend for the sanity of other readers to just watch the Cinema Sins [youtube.com] episode and call it good!
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Thursday February 18 2016, @05:15PM
I don't recall the power, but I have a green laser pointer that I use for stargazing. The green light shows up well against the night sky.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 18 2016, @05:31PM
If there's a sticker on the device the mW power measurement may be printed on it.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2016, @06:00PM
The stated power is at the frequency of the laser. There have been some cheap laser pointers (I think green) out of China that didn't bother to block IR [spie.org] and they were putting out dangerous levels of IR power, so you have to be careful what you have and how you use it.