Professional flight crew make decisions based on compliance with corporate policies and international safety standards. If company policy dictates that an aircraft should land if a pilot has been dazzled by a laser, then that is what the crew need to do.
If the circumstances of this incident are as has been reported then several things don't make sense.
The aircraft was roughly a mile above the ground and allowing for the beam direction to enter the cockpit through a side window at a reasonable angle, the ground location would need to be a couple of miles to the side of the aircraft.
Lasers capable of causing eye damage while being focused on the cockpit area of a rapidly moving aircraft at a range of three or more miles are not consumer items bought off the internet.
The pilots apparently did not immediately report the incident to Heathrow or a UK based air traffic control.
Having declared an emegency, the aircraft dumped fuel and flew back to Heathrow rather than land at Shannon where the pilot could have received more immediate medical assistance.
I was under the impression that larger aircraft carried two pilots so that in event of one pilot becoming incapacitated, the other would be capable of flying the aircraft to its destination, albeit with a reduced level of safety. Modern aircraft are complex, but we are frequently told that the pilots only hand fly aircraft at take off and landing. It isn't as if this flight would have been hand flown across the Atlantic by a single pilot.
I wasn't there on board the aircraft, so whatever decisions the flight crew made were right for them, at the time. The aircraft landed safely and the passengers were uninjured.
Ultra high powered lasers used for cutting materials operate outside the human visual range, so are unlikely to have featured in this incident. Visual spectrum lasers with powers of up to 50 watts are used in arena stage shows and outdoor displays. One of these would certainly cause a distraction if pointed in your direction and would be visible for many miles. These are rather expensive and unlikely to be in private ownership. Anyone legally possessing such a device would be unlikely to deliberately target an aircraft with it in my opinion. Such an act would be tantamount to an act of war and there is a Geneva Convention banning the use of lasers to blind enemy combatants (and presumably civilians).
Hopefully the culprit will be swiftly located and dealt with in an appropriate manner.
The reporting also suggests that the aircraft was deliberately targetted and didn't just happen to fly through a fixed beam being used for display or star location purposes. Such a fixed beam would only have caused a brief flash in the cockpit and would have been unlikely to have caused the disruption it did. So making this most likely a deliberate act.
The crew took the decisions they did in the light of their circumstances at the time and it all ended safely, so they deserve congratulations for that. I sincerely hope that the affected pilot recovers swiftly from the effects of this incident and that it has no affect on his medical status to fly.
With the benefit of hindsight, you can be right all the time.
