One thing PDR is missing is that up-collimators have been shipping on high end laser pointers for a long time. The two milli-Radians he uses in his example are a low end toy at this time. Its easily possible to achieve 0.1 mR with a few external optics.
Indeed it is, and while that significantly increases the power density in the beam by a factor of 400 (remembering that the analysis suggested we were 3-6 orders of magnitude below the MPE value) it also reduces the size of the beam for the 8,000 foot aeroplane from a 10m disk to a 50cm disk, and the probability of that disk illuminating the pilot's eyes (the required targeting accuracy and/or the duration of illumination for a "waggle" swipe-pass) become much more significant, so it doesn't change much. For the aeroplane on finals at 300 feet the 0.1mRad beam diameter drops to about a quarter of an inch. Are you really suggesting that a person standing 600 feet away with a laser pointer can hold a 1/4" diameter beam onto a pilot's eye, when he probably can't even SEE the pilot through the cockpit window?
But I am also led to believe that the sort of lasers used as toys by idiots aren't the ones with particularly effective collimators fitted to them, although the source for that isn't particularly authoritative.
PDR