A few months ago I got into an argument on TikTok about this. Some guy posted a video where he pretended to shine a laser pointer at a plane during the day, along with his mugshot and a news story about getting arrested for it. It was clearly a joke/photoshopped because the news story said it happened at midnight.
The argument was about a couple things. 1. Would such a low power laser actually be able to hit an aircraft? And 2. My line of thinking is, it’s dangerous to do it at night because the light scatters when it hits the windows and can impair the pilots vision. Would there actually be any similar danger during the day (besides if it hit the pilots eyes directly)?
I know it’s illegal af regardless, maybe it could mess with sensors or cameras or something. But I’m curious if my assumptions are wrong.
Depends on the power.
The little things that run off tiny button batteries? Almost certainly not. The bigger/more powerful ones might.
That said, don’t. It’s stupid to try, especially if you think it could. I mean think about it. You think it might blind a pilot? That’s a lot of lives your potentially putting at risk.
What possible motivation could cause you to want to risk it?
It was one of those tiny toy ones. Yeah, definitely still a dumb idea. Not condoning it or recommending it ever. It was just a dumb internet argument, but I second guessed myself, because people were insistent that it would still reach the plane
Your “but this won’t reach the plane” reasoning is exactly and precisely why this is illegal.