WestJet pilot injured by green laser, placed on medical leave
 

A WestJet pilot flying from Newfoundland to Orlando International Airport had his eyes burned by a green laser light, U.S. Federal Aviation Administration officials said Wednesday.

Spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said in an email that the WestJet Airlines aircraft was about 40 kilometres from the airport when the laser light hit the pilot. The flight landed safely a short time later, and the pilot was placed on medical leave, which is routine in such cases.

The airline said in a statement that the incident took place Saturday but gave few details, citing privacy concerns.

Full article here: https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/westjet...ando-1.4432362

Amendment to the Law:
 

Attempted mass murder?
Terrorism?
Both!

Simple rely.

Are there any airports that are famous for getting lots of these? I recall london city being a top culprit, further afield i also know of Algiers and Tunis being subject to regular laser attacks.

Corfu, Glasgow (23)

Nobody invented reflective laser-proof aviator glasses yet?

You obviously haven't been in Italy.

I got 'hit' by a green laser a few years ago, only briefly and from 150m away approx, it affected my vision for a few days.

I got hit on several occasions while teaching NVFR on SEP, even though I saw them coming and try to stare away that tiny fraction of time it's enought for a headache and long minutes of being glared.
I always reported to the ACC or TWR who informed the local police.
A sad thing.

Pprune automagically changes the spelling to the form shown.:bored:

Links to at least one somewhat popular website get changed too.

http://aviationarchives.********.com...ht-manual.html

In the CBC article here:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfo...aser-1.5144981

They are saying:

"When any sort of light enters the flight deck, pilots are trained to look away and maintain focus but they must also remain vigilant with respect to their surroundings and monitor the apron prior to landing."

(My emphasis) Is this some sort of new procedure with which I am not familiar?

well, no point in landing if there's no parking spot available...............

Cairo, Egypt. We used to come in without landinglights. If you put them on it attracted the lasers immediately.

At the recent Airbus Safety conference this was brought up.

They tried laser reflecting / dispersing screens but that didn't really work with the different angles involved.

There are now laser proof glasses that can be worn at night. Totally complaint with Airbus cockpits.

Honeywell make some. Google for them, but doesn't say what cockpits they are compliant with.

Well, yes, as long as the laser is used to guide the bombs being released on the target.

Laser safety glaseses are not sunglasses, they filter a specific wavelength. Of course you need to select the correct glasses for the wavelength expected, but most of these attacks seem to be the 550nm green. They only have to filter a small part of the colour spectrum. Of course certification for flight use is another matter.

There's outfit in Halifax, Canada that was working on a protective coating for the cockpit windows that's supposed to protect the crew, but I don't know if their product is fully tested and in use yet.

Laser Safety & Laser Glare Prevention | Metamaterial Technologies

It is some sort of joke or harassment, don't know which. In the old days 'Land Rover' came out as 'Trabant'!

1. 532nm
2. Coatings with high reflectivity in only a narrow spectral range have a significant angular dependence, i.e. they only work for specific angles. Therefore laser goggles tend to be rather broad range, which means (in the visible) they are tinted (reddish, for example). I think this is going to be unacceptable in a work environment which amongst other things relies on color cues.

Just out of interest, has anyone ever tried doing an Ishihara test with these l@ser-proof goggles on?

My employer company users lasers, the largest of which is rated at 150 Watts, in its products and we operate a laser test range in KonTum Province in VietNam. Our range, several kilometres in length, at 5,000 feet, is used to develop military applications.

Most of the lasers used to 'flash' aircraft are rated at less than 0.5 Watt. Human eyes are more sensitive to green lasers as opposed to red lasers. Furthermore, the laser optics cannot be focused at greater than around 500 feet given the poor quality of the lenses.

What is described as 'burned' is impossible even at a couple of thousand feet. The complaints are based more on the bodies reaction, in other words a psychological reaction rather than a physiological reaction. I have been at the 'hot' end of a 150W laser, 1 kilometre distant, and suffered no injuries.

Back in the 1960s there was an experiment at Hamilton Airport , Ontario (IATA Code: YHM, ICAO Code: CYHM) using high powered gas lasers to drive birds from runways. It failed, although we did enjoy many chicken and turkey dinners!

'Laser-proof' eye wear, yes - and cheaper than Aviator glasses.

any news on how the affected pilot is doing?

Great post. As a retinal specialist who works with lasers and sees patients will retinal laser injuries, I agree. One minor point, though. I suspect the lasers that are being used are quite a bit stronger than .5 mW, which would be a standard laser pointer. One can buy lasers cheaply on the internet that are labeled as less than a 1 mW but if you actually test them, they are sometimes over 120 mW ! At ranges of several feet to yards, a few seconds of retinal exposure of that type of laser can do permanent harm to the retina.

The low power (pointer)laser power ratings are usually inaccurate. The output can be raised by changing the value of a resistor - details on many YouTubes.

But, without exception, the optics (focusing) on these low end devices are very poor - usually of plastic.

On our KonTum laser range, up in the mountains, we can place a laser under test and examine a target that can be moved about a kilometre so we can examine the beam dispersion caused by poor lens.

Our high-end lasers (100 Watt++) use glass lens and the dispersion is minimal but the 'burn' effect is still minimal at distance over 1000 metres.