What danger do lazer pointers pose to aircraft?

Question

Sydney airport flight - Beams from four green lasers, which appeared to come from an area just southwest of the city, were directed at planes for 15 minutes late Saturday, in what officials labeled a "coordinated attack."

What could a lazer pointer do? You cant point the thing into a cockpit from the ground so what could a beam of light possibly do?

Answer 1

have you ever driven a car against a searchlight? or against the car that does not dimm the lights when passing you? thats what you receive when the pointer is pointed at you.

the pointer does not pose any therat to the structural integrity of the plane, but it harrasses the crew and may temporalily blind them. flying into the sun does not count, since you can lower the blinds, fly instruments and you are aware of the flying into the sun.

the babbling about the laser guided missiles is a bull**** since the laser guided munitions are used against surface targets, and use modulation to provide recognition of the target for the missile. the modulation provides pairing of  the missile and the target dot.

Answer 2

go in to the eye of the pilot? and cause Blindness and the plane will crash!! and people may DIE!....

Answer 3

it could cut the plane in half!! so dont do it please!

Answer 4

Why is it that "You can't point the thing into a cockpit from the ground"?  The pilots can't see the ground?

Answer 5

It is completely incorrect to say that "many landings are done on autopilot anyway". In fact only a few of them are (Autoland) ... in any case  a laser pointer could greatly distract pilots in a critical phase of the flight when they are extremely busy... auto pilot or not. In the US it is an arrestable ofrense to shine a laserpointer or strong search light at an aircraft. I had someone arrested over 12 years ago that was shining a search light into a helicopter I was flying.

Answer 6

The danger of lasers is that they can temporarily blind pilots with their brightness.  At night, the lasers can destroy their night vision for several minutes at a time, which can be very dangerous if they are in a critical phase of flight, such as take-off or landing.  It can also make it impossible for them to see instruments in the cockpit until the effect wears off.

Additionally, some pilots have suffered permanent damage to their vision from lasers pointed into the cockpit from the ground.  In theory, it is possible to permanently blind pilots with a sufficiently strong laser, although permanent and complete blindness hasn't happened so far.

Lasers can also have exactly the same effect on passengers, if they are directed towards passenger windows.

There is no risk to the aircraft itself.

Answer 7

it could be labeled as a"coordinated attack" because there are missiles that are lazier guided, meaning the missile has a sensor on board the will follow the lazier, so by pointing one at a plane officials might think that the plane was being targeted to be blown up.

Answer 8

A strong laser can blind the pilot, even if only momentarilly. Small, hand-held lasers, in their original design, present little or no danger of this due to their weak energy over that distance.

There is an astronomical observatory south of San Francisco Airport that occasionally fires a strong laser to the Moon to bounce off the Apollo ranging device there. The observatory must publish a "Notam" to warn pilots away from the area during those shot times.

There is no danger of damaging the aircraft itself with commercially-available lasers. Some research has been done to develop a laser that might have that kind of energy, but the power source is huge, and not very portable.

Answer 9

the hazards are more prone to at night,when cockpit lights are dim and dark. The eyes of the pilots have adapted to the dark, so the pupils are fully dialated to allow the most amount of light in.  The lasers, when shined in the eyes will cause temporary blindness due to the brightness of it, and this will cause a negative image to appear in the pilots vision, which will result in a black spot. This can be very dangerous, becasue of the times that they usaully happen is when the aircraft is in approah to land and this blindness can lead to accidnets, because the pilot does not have enought time for the eyes to fully adapt back to the dark as this can take about 30 mins, and runways at nmight are basically a black hole, with lights on either side of them.

There have been many reports of pilots going to the hosiptal due to temportay blindness caused by lasers hitting them directly in the eye, which incaptiates them from the flight deck duties, and any time an crew member becomes incapatied, the airline has to submit a NTSB report.