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posted by CoolHand on Thursday February 18 2016, @03:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the promoting-laser-beams-on-sharks dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2016, @08:59PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2016, @08:59PM (#306547)

    two similar notes in a couple of days but now with an "medical emergency". Just fascist an imperialist state trying to push more orwellian shit

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2016, @08:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2016, @08:35AM (#306776)

    So much this.

    A guy who covers police corruption at a local radio station here was arrested on suspicion of shining a laser at an air plane from his back yard. He didn't have any lasers on the premises and only used a mouse with the projectors in meetings... but they "found" one anyway. It's just yet another tool to squash dissent.

    Don't forget, any gun with laser sights will be banned shortly too.

    The primary tool of the police state is to make so many laws about so much trivial shit that they can arrest anyone at any time for political reasons and claim them to be breaking the law.

    Next they'll be outlawing spoons, because you could turn enough of them into a knife, or some shit.