A man who aimed a green laser pointer at a Delta Air Lines flight on approach to Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF) has been sentenced to 18 months in prison. During the March 2024 incident, Joseph L. Crapsi, 31, of Cheektowaga, repeatedly aimed the laser at the aircraft during the critical phase of flight.
According to one of the pilots, the attack lasted between 60 and 90 seconds, adding that he felt “something horrible would happen.” Laser attacks are a serious threat that can temporarily blind pilots and, in severe cases, cause permanent damage, as well as endanger the safety of an aircraft and its occupants.
This is very dangerous, but my concern is less this specific instance, and more the underlying context. I’m 30, and this guy was 31. My parents did teach me not to point lasers up or at planes; however, their generation experience much more information about this than I ever did. I really think we need to invest in public information campaigns. If you live within some distance of a commercial airport, maybe you should occasionally get an ad telling you how dangerous this is. Maybe even collaborate with companies to push relevant videos on the topic.
Plus, in the age of the internet I don’t think propaganda is quite as dangerous if the government starts misbehaving. Of course, I’d also like democratic systems to make sure these information campaigns are true and fair.
Telling a bunch of people not to do X is a great way to get a few of them to do X.
If people don’t know the dangers, it’s kinda hard to blame them. It’s like convicting a child of murder after they accidentally fumbled a gun. Sure, you can do it, but good luck convincing anyone it’s justice.
So a few things:
- He probably did not do this to only one plane.
- was this the first time he went to it to do this, or just when he was caught?
- Imagine if he did cause this plane to crash and potentially dozens of people were injured or killed?
There aren’t a lot of situations you can endanger that many lives at one time. This was an incredibly dangerous thing to do.
18 months seems like her got let off insanely lucky.
also a laser powerful enough , can permantly blind someone too.
Yeah and those green lasers are no joke. I use one (with an absolute abundance of caution) to sight my telescope when I’m way out in the middle of nowhere, where there aren’t many flight paths, because you can see it clear as day against the sky. The whole way up. They are wildly powerful, despite being fairly cheap.
I’m constantly paranoid about bringing new people viewing with me because they inevitably want to play with the laser… I can’t blame them, that and the UV laser I’ve got are very very cool, but they demand respect for both the laser and the laws around their use.
and they showcase ones that are capable of causing fires, that can be acquired in the us. dont think its legal though
Lasers in CD / DVD / blue ray drives are already powerful enough to damage your eyes. Those green laser pointers are way way bigger
Should be a month for every passenger.
Some 16yo does this… I can perhaps understand being ignorant of the law and getting a severe warning with community service.
This dipshit’s 31.
Physical age all too often bears little resemblance to maturity level. Proof of this is given constantly by the current USA administration.
That’s true, but the 31-year-old has had plenty of opportunity to mature and chose not to, while the 16-year-old at least has the benefit of the doubt.
I’m not entirely disagreeing, but just want to point out that some may have challenges most others don’t have in maturing. Speaking from personal experience, I was extremely mature in some ways at a young age, but - due to multiple factors I won’t go into here - there were some other key areas in which I didn’t start maturing until well into my 40s, and the reason I say this is because that was NOT by any real choice on my part.
What this guy did was obviously wrong, but it’s only obvious to those of us who fully understand the problems with doing what he did. He may not have had opportunity to come to that understanding, or - for any of a number of possible reasons - it didn’t fully sink in.
Ultimately, my point is that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about what an asshole this guy may be without full knowledge of how he came to wind up doing it. We too often assume everybody knows it’s a stupid thing to do, but his life circumstances may not have given him the chance to learn what “everybody knows.”
I am agreeing with you, but blinding a pilot with a laser is beyond fucked up. And that is something you should know no matter how impaired you are. I’m not saying you should know it because it’s obvious if you think about it. But society should teach that. This idiot endangered thousands of lives. Imagine the plane would have crashed into a mall for example. Or the gates in the airport.
Society should do LOTS of things it doesn’t - often deliberately due to certain factions within it. Those things are even more destructive, as our current climate crisis is starting to prove.
This guy may just have been a minor side effect of the ever-present power struggle going on within our society.
Probably. Someone out there probably loves the poorly educated 😐
Powerful green lasers do not come with a common newspaper subscription and their shipping boxes are covered in warning labels.
This was a deliberate choice to do wrong.
I can’t help but feel you’re being deliberately obtuse & judgemental, so I’m done with this circular argument (and yes, I’m aware you’re not the person I was speaking to, but you’re repeating the same assumptions). It seems to me you have some maturing of your own still left to do.
Out of arguments, I see. So let’s discredited the other person’s accountability *slowclap
“Out of arguments?” Against the same “arguments” I’ve already shot down? Alright, ya got me - I couldn’t come up with different arguments against someone’s repeat of the same arguments I already beat down.
🙄
Good job, fuckhead, enjoy your 18 months.
Gotta be not much more then a stiff breeze going through dudes head if he thought he wouldn’t be caught. It’s a laser, it points right at you dumdum.
Play stupid games…
Was passenger in a plane that got lasered
Was looking into the night, when suddenly something green kept flickering on the ground. Took me a second to realize what it was
Luckily we were quite high and whoever did it was hitting the side of the plane, not the cockpit
Annoyingly, I didn’t think about letting the crew know about it
