US: Lasers hit 4 planes at LaGuardia Friday, 2 more Saturday

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is asking for leads in six laser incidents involving aircraft landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Friday Nov. 4 and Saturday Nov. 5, 2011. The green laser beams came from an area roughly five miles southwest of the airport (area circled in red on map below).

Four commuter jets were illuminated on Friday between 6:06 and 7:56 pm. On Saturday, a commuter jet and a Boeing 757 were illuminated around 7:00 pm. The aircraft were between 1600 and 2500 feet when struck by the laser beams. There were no reports of injuries, eye effects, or flight deviations.

Aviation expert John Trepani said the clustering of the incidents was troubling: “That’s unusual and highly disturbing. Do we have people fooling around or do we have people who have bad intentions to airliners using a sighting, using a laser as a sighter, a weapon’s sighter, just to see the reaction, just to see if Homeland Security takes this seriously?”

Trepani was also troubled by the fact that all aircraft landed on Runway 4, which CBS called “one of the most difficult runways at LaGuardia” (although this claim was disputed by a pilot in the comments).

Anyone with information can contact local police and/or the FAA. LaserPointerSafety.com has a page about how to report laser incidents; the page includes FAA contact information.

From MSNBC.com and CBS New York
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Tags: US, New York, LaGuardia Airport, Airplane, Color: Green, Unknown perpetrator, Map