San Francisco, CA -
A scare involving two airplanes landing in San Francisco Thursday night prompted renewed interest in the dangers of aiming laser lights at aircraft.
ABC's Good Morning America aired a story Sunday morning about the incident, which included a reference to a Tulsa boy aiming a laser at a helicopter in 2011.
"There's a twelve-year-old boy in Tulsa who said, I wanted to say hello to the pilot," Patrick Murphy of the International Laser Display Association told ABC's Lisa Stark in October. "He thought it would just be a little tiny dot like he plays with his cat, and he didn't realize that instead it's a big ball of light that the pilot can't see past."
Mr. Murphy told KTUL.com on Sunday that he clearly remembered the incident and directed us to records at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
According to FAA records, the boy had pointed a hand-held green laser light at Tulsa Police Helicopter One from the parking lot of a mosque in the 4600 block of South Irvington Avenue in Tulsa around midnight on July 10, 2011.
Murphy told Lisa Stark in October that there were more than 3592 reported incidents of lasers being pointed at aircraft, up 27% from 2010.
Lasers are aimed at small planes, helicopters, and commercial jets.
Those convicted can face civil fines of $11,000 for each incident, as well as criminal penalties of $250,000 and five years in prison.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has joined an investigation to find out who aimed lasers at airplanes landing at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) Thursday night.
The FAA told sister station KGO the incident involved a Skywest commuter jet and a Virgin America Airbus 320 that reported having lasers pointed into their cockpits.
The Skywest Flight 6269 pilot saw it coming at 10:25 p.m. Thursday and alerted Air Traffic Control. "San Francisco, that laser is almost right underneath us now," he was heard saying in radio communications.
The laser was about 4000 feet altitude and 14 miles east-southeast of Palo Alto.
Just four minutes later, the Virgin America Flight 211 pilot reported a laser at the same altitude about 13 miles east of Palo Alto.
The FBI would like to strongly remind the public about the seriousness of this crime. It used to be prosecuted under the general heading of interfering with the operation of an aircraft, but in February it became its own specific crime punishably by up to $250,000 in fines and five years in prison.
"It probably was just a little pinpoint laser bought in an office supply store that you use for a lot of Power Point presentations," SFO spokesperson Mike McCarron told sister station KGO, "but what happens is that pinpoint spreads out as it gets up higher and farther away, and what may seem like a very faint light to you, in a cockpit, gets almost blinding."
McCarron told KGO that lasers directed at cockpits are dangerous under any circumstances but that landing and takeoff are the worst possible times.
[Sources: KGO, ABC, Patrick Murphy]
ABC's Lisa Stark and Patrick Murphy of the International Laser Display Association, photo courtesy ABC
Mike McCarron, San Francisco International Airport spokesman, photo courtesy KGO
