FAA Goes To the Web To Fight Laser-Pointing

coondoggie writes "The Federal Aviation Administration wants you to go online to help it battle the growing safety problem of people pointing lasers at flying aircraft. The FAA today said it created a new website to make it easier for pilots and the public to report laser incidents and obtain information on the problem which continues to grow by leaps and bounds. This year, pilots reported 2,795 laser events through Oct. 20. Pilots have reported the most laser events in 2011 in Phoenix (96), Philadelphia (95) and Chicago (83). Since it began tracking laser events in 2005 reports rose from nearly 300 to 2,836 in 2010, the FAA said."

Comments

Re:What kind of problems does it create for pilots

[bmo]

A windshield is not a perfect surface. It's got all sorts of scratches and dirt and whatnot.

The laser hits the windshield and makes every single one of these imperfections light up from scattering. It can make things difficult to see.

--
BMO

Landing

[RPGillespie]

The biggest problems are when the aircraft is landing, not when flying at 10,000 feet. It is extremely difficult to shine a laser into the cockpit of an airplane if it is high above you, but as the aircraft is approaching the ground, it is easy for someone on the ground or in the airport to shine the beam into the cockpit as the craft gets closer and closer to the runway. The light bead could easily pass over any exposed eyes, temporarily blinding the pilots. It's not too big a deal for commercial aircraft since computers do the majority of the flying, but it can be dangerous for manually flown small aircraft.

Re:Landing

[T-Bucket]

It's not too big a deal for commercial aircraft since computers do the majority of the flying, but it can be dangerous for manually flown small aircraft.

This is complete BS. The only time a computer is flying a commercial aircraft during the landing phase is when the weather is so bad that you wouldn't be able to find the airplane with a laser.

The public has this myth that all planes are controlled by computers. I fly commercial jets for a living. The autopilot rarely goes on below 10,000 feet. The only time it's used during approach/landing is if the weather is bad. (This frees up the pilots for more important things like finding the runway).

I have personally been hit by green lasers three times on approach to major airports. Let me tell you, it's not fun. Fortunately, if you look away rather quickly you can move past the laser before you're in too much danger. (The average jet is doing ~150mph on short final).

Still, it's a legit problem, and anything they can do to put the fucktards who are doing this away is a good thing.

Re:Landing

[FlyingGuy]

Before I go any further, I am a pilot.

I don't care if you are flying a piper cub or a 787 Dreamliner. Final approach and landing is the single most dangerous operation performed by pilots.

You are low and slow and the engines are spooled way down because you are using minimum power, just enough to keep the damn thing flying, but slow enough so that when the wheels hit the pavement you don't blow all the tires and shear off the gear and kill all the people on board. Unless you are shooting a landing into damn near zero / zero conditions ( and only a very few airports are equipped to do that ( no GPS does not do that ) the plane is most assuredly NOT on auto pilot there are people flying those planes. At night it is dark in the cockpit and has been for hours. The pilots pupils are basically wide open, so just imagine how your eyes are going to react when a laser hits that acrylic windshield and every little minor scratch starts sending light in every fucking direction. even if you don;t take a shot into the eyes the windshield becomes damn near opaque and the pour underpaid overworked tired bastard is now a couple of hundred feet from the ground and suddenly can see a god damn thing except for his glowing windshield. Nice scenario eh? I am making 150kts and sinking at 500 feet per minute, or 8 feet per second so at 200 feet i got less then 30 seconds to get everything right or your relatives coming to visit are going to be showing up at your house in a barbeque bag.

Please don't try an minimize this at all. Your post shows you at least have some sense of the problem.

Re:What kind of problems does it create for pilots

[AlienIntelligence]

I don't doubt that this is a problem, but I'd like to know what the pilots experience is when this happens. Does the laser light cause the entire cockpit to light up? What kind of disturbance does it cause?

Depends on the particular laser, quality, build, color, power, etc.

Also depends on how clean the cockpit glass is at that spot it is hitting.

Laser quality affects the collimation at a great distance, where a
cheaply built Chinese green targeting laser has a pretty appreciable
spread at landing altitude. At a half mile, my green dot is a good
inch or so, diameter.

That coupled with a bug splattered cockpit glass, would produce some
pretty overwhelming speculars in the cockpit, also potentially striking
off of other reflective objects.

Potentially worse would be a very finely collimated laser making its
way into the cockpit and having a specular reflection directly in the
pilot's eyes. A suitable powered green laser would cause at best,
temporary blindness. Total blindness while not common isn't ruled out.
And that laser could get the co-pilot as well, easily. Just leaving the
flight tech to land.

And this is on approach, 5 minutes or so to get squared or splatted.

I live in Phoenix, where the article mentions some of the highest
incidences. And I can believe it. When I first got back into Real Estate
here, I attempted to draw a map of all the "noise zones" associated
with aircraft here. I gave up as soon as I realized there was ZERO
land mass in the Phoenix valley that does not have SOME air traffic
at least hourly during flight traffic hours for the commuter airfields.
7pm at night, I've counted 20+ planes aloft. Gets crowded up there
when we have UFO's too. =) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights

What's worse, west phoenix has all those hot shots in their F-18s,
flying their practice sorties 4 at a time coming out of Luke AFB.
Right... over... head. Sigh. Can't wait to hear the LOUDER F-35,
since we won the bid. Hope they are deployed after I move.

-AI

Re:I'm surprised it's such a problem

[DNS-and-BIND]

See youtube for what it's like to be lased from the ground by someone with a powerful laser pointer. You can shaky-hands it all you want, all you need to to is hit the aircraft once or twice and the pilots are blinded.

Re:Sounds like you need a tech solution

[subreality]

The trouble with attenuating lasers is that you still need to see. Green is where we have our best vision by far. Red is fair, and our vision in blue is terrible. That's why the green lasers are always the biggest problem.

Thing is, green is right in the middle of the spectrum. Most filters are high-pass or low-pass. It's quite hard to make a very narrow notch filter that won't take out a huge swath of your most important vision information. That's why there are different laser safety goggles for different wavelengths - if you're using a red laser, you break out the blue goggles.

Pilots can't afford to lose that much vision on final approach.

I think there are some technological countermeasures that can be taken. I'd add a telephoto camera to the front of the plane that can zoom in and take a few shots whenever the plane gets hit with a laser. Even if you can't make out their faces, you might get some license plates, or see whose back yard it's coming from.

I think there are also nontechnological things they should be doing. First up would be to take some cockpit videos using a camera with a nice wide aperture - real sensitive, like your eyes are in the dark. Show the runway getting closer, closer, then FLASH you're completely overwhelmed by green for a couple seconds, stop the camera down a few to simulate your now-desensitized eyes, and then go back to trying to land the plane, now much closer to the runway and somewhat disoriented. Then publicize the hell out of the videos and some people will get the message.

For the rest, well, that's what the telephoto pictures are for.