MOSCOW, August 13 (RIA Novosti) – At least five aircraft have been hit by laser pointers that can blind pilots over the past few days at airports in Russia’s two biggest cities, reviving calls to criminalize such attacks.
An incoming Aeroflot plane from Frankfurt was targeted by a green laser as it flew over the Dmitrovskoye highway outside Moscow on Monday night, transport police said.
The attack did not prevent the jet from landing at Sheremetyevo Airport with eight crew and 104 passengers unharmed, a police spokesman told RIA Novosti.
A similar attack, also on Monday, targeted a Russian Airlines jet bound for St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport, but did not disrupt its flight or landing, a company spokeswoman said.
Three more jets were targeted by laser pointers as they neared Sheremetyevo on Sunday, though all three landed safely, police reported, without elaborating.
Laser attacks on jets surged in 2011, when more than 50 were reported, a significant increase on the previous year. The frequency of these attacks fell in 2012, transport police said in February.
When laser attacks peaked in 2011, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, proposed that such attacks should be punishable with jail terms of up to 10 years in prison, but until now the bill has been stuck in legislative limbo.
The Duma will return to the bill, and may pass it during its upcoming fall session, in response to this new spate of attacks, senior lawmaker Pavel Krasheninnikov said Tuesday.
Laser pointers were banned in mid-2011 in Chechnya by the republic’s head Ramzan Kadyrov, after a local teenager attacked a jet over the capital Grozny. The teenager was caught, but escaped with a verbal telling-off by Kadyrov.
The light from these laser pointers can travel several kilometers, and can cause pilots short-term vision loss or glare on cockpit windows, preventing the pilots from seeing outside.
