Just been discussing this at home here, and we just decided that even as adults who would never do such a thing, if you pick one up your natural curiosity is to turn the thing on and "shoot" a few objects in the room. You are careful not to point it at anyone of course. But you have a play with the laser and put it down again.
Kids, say 10-15 are just as playful however they are looking for greater challenges, so they go outside at night and every dog cat car, the mirror in the bedroom of the girl next door gets tagged. Now pointing it skyward yields very little reward as the man in the moon is on stress leave, so the next best thing is this nice white traget flying overhead. Its big enough, its white and yes you can tag it. Great game!
Probably I guess most a/c get tagged on the sides, as the 767 pax above posted, but occassionally the crew get it, or its the work of a more stupid being.
I wonder if Virgin get as many tags as Qantas, because it would be hard to spot a red dot on a
VB fuselage at a great distance.
I really feel its a matter of the police, airlines and PARENTS drilling into their kids about the stupidity and dangers of doing it.
J