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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."
This is something I would never do because, well, it's dumb and there are better things to do.
But I wonder how much of this is "there is a serious risk we could crash" and how much is "damn kids, we are pilots, FAA we are quite put out, use your quick-and-dirty-no-legislation-needed administrative law powers".
Advice: on VPS providers
Laser pointers are tiny handheld devices that can be concealed or brought anywhere, so you'll never be able to track anyone down and stop them. If you're the type to actually get off on shining lasers at airplanes, then it's just going to make your day to see your latest venture reported on the website. I mean, when I see one of those radar equipped speed limit signs that tells you how fast you're going, I always end up seeing how fast I can get before I pass it. This is going to have the same effect on these people.
When your potential culprit is a six year old child, your weapon of concern is bought for a few bucks at Wal*Mart, and you're dealing with thousands of incidents, I think it's pretty clear that you need a technological solution for filtering laser light, not a massive network of informants.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Don't pretend to know anything about airline flying, because you obviously don't. It's quite the opposite, actually: we (yes, I'm an airline pilot) only use autoland in very bad visibility conditions, or when required to keep our currency. You actually need to make a few autolands per year to stay current, but these can normally be performed in the simulator nowadays so it's not an issue anymore.
Almost all landings are manual. The last autoland I did (apart from the simulator) must have been about a year ago. Most of the time, we do use the ILS (which is just a guidance towards the runway, it's what people call "the instruments") but we do it manually while looking out the window as well. And we quite often make completely visual approaches too, although that's being allowed less and less due to noise abatement regulations (they prefer all planes to fly the same, well defined trajectory and only annoy the same people all the time).
Some companies ban visual approaches completely (except under special circumstances), but I don't know of any companies that use autoland all the time. It would be a bad idea anyway: in very windy conditions, the autoland cannot cope and its use is prohibited. Or sometimes there's a technical malfunction. In those cases, the plane can only be landed by a pilot. Would you then prefer a pilot who lands the aircraft every day, or one that only lands the plane a few times a year to keep his currency?
There's also this widespread misunderstanding that autoland makes things easier for the pilots. Believe me, it's actually more work than a normal landing with all the checklists and verifications we have to do, and the constant monitoring of a system that lacks common sense and might suddenly do weird things due to some system bug. Yes, that does happen occasionally.
Don't be ridiculous. Systems often break down (lots of different equipment failures can disable autoland), and you can't even use it in very windy conditions. In those cases, would you prefer to have a pilot who lands the plane every day, or one that almost never does? And even with autoland, we're always relieved to actually be able to see the runway. It's the single most important backup to a system that just relies on some electrical signals from the ground.