WASHINGTON – The holiday season is here and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) wants to make sure your laser-light displays are aimed at your house, not at the sky. Each year, FAA receive reports from pilots who are distracted or temporarily blinded by residential laser-light displays.
People might not realize this, but a well-meaning attempt to spread holiday cheer has the potential to create a serious safety risk to pilots and passengers on aeroplanes that fly overhead. So please make sure all laser lights are directed at your house and not pointing towards the sky. The extremely concentrated beams of laser lights reach much farther than you might realize.
The FAA works with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to pursue civil and criminal penalties against individuals who purposely aim a laser at an aircraft. We may impose civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation. Civil penalties of up to $30,800 have been imposed by the FAA against individuals for multiple laser incidents.
Laser strikes against aircraft continue to increase each year. As of November 22, the FAA received 8,550 laser strike reports for 2021, exceeding the 2020 total of 6,852. This marks the highest number of laser strike incidents since FAA began tracking statistics in 2010.
Intentionally aiming a laser at an aircraft is a serious safety risk and violates federal law. Many high-powered lasers can completely incapacitate pilots who are trying to fly safely to their destinations and may be carrying hundreds of passengers.
To identify laser strike trends, the FAA developed a visualization tool, using the Tableau software platform that shows laser strike data from 2010 to 2020 and highlights trends by geographic area, per capita data, time of day and year.
