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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.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2016, @09:50AM
Many in the airline industry don't like pilots with impaired vision flying their planes, so better to land while the co-pilot is still OK (and doesn't have problems etc) - why risk bad PR if stuff happens (just look at the MH17 and MH370 incidents - people are boycotting MAS even though there's no clear proof yet that MAS or their pilots did anything more wrong than other average airlines/pilots were doing)
From what I gather it's more likely for your eye lenses to focus the light from the laser into a very small hot dot than for them to focus the headlamp light into a very small hot dot - it would be a bigger less hot dot at the back of your retina. So while you could probably get blinded by briefly staring at some headlamps very close, the danger distance drops off far more rapidly than for a laser. Even laser light from reflections might still stay collimated enough to do damage.