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Wednesday, April 04, 2012

'Flash Blinding' Pilots Becoming Growing, Dangerous Trend

A dangerous trend is emerging in the air. Pilots are seeing a big increase in the number of times someone has "flash blinded" them in mid-air with lasers.

The lasers light up a cockpit, bounces off the gauges, disorients pilots and can even temporarily blind him.

It happened to pilot Chris Lovejoy one night as he was trying to help troopers on the ground who were involved in a high speed chase.

"Did we get shot at? I've been in combat in Iraq and the first couple of seconds you're going, 'What is going on?'" Lovejoy says.

Last year alone in Maryland, pilots were "flash blinded" by lasers 63 times. Someone even did it to ABC7’s own NewsChopper 7 pilot in 2009 as he was flying in Silver Spring.

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1 comment:

lmclain said...

Sometimes, the people fight back. It ain't always a cake walk using high tech weapons and surveillance against the citizens. Poor guys. Thought he was back in Iraq? The lights bouncing around the cockpit looked and sounded so much like a .50 cal opening up on him....grow a set, you sissy. And get used to some resistance.