Another passenger aircraft landing in Kelowna hit by laser

A potentially dangerous laser beam hit an Air Canada Jazz plane coming in for a landing in Kelowna from Vancouver earlier this week.

The incident ended well but could have been tragic.

“I don’t think people realize the danger it causes to the environment of the cockpit and then the danger it poses to the aircraft and to the people that are on that airplane,” Kelowna Airport manager Sam Samaddar told iNFOnews.ca Thursday, Aug. 26.

“It creates a very disorientating environment for the pilot because they’re trying to follow the guidance of their instruments and everything else. As soon as this thing hits into the cockpit it’s like a bright light coming into the cockpit. It destroys their night vision in the cockpit environment.”

If it hits a pilot directly in the eye it can cause permanent damage, even blindness.

These are not the little laser pointers that are used in presentations but a laser with more than one milliwatt of power, which are prohibited from being imported into Canada or sold.

READ MORE: Kelowna Airport’s expansion plans on hold due to pandemic

Samaddar described these larger, hand-held lasers as being similar to a Star Wars lightsaber than can project a beam 1,000 feet or more into the air.

They can even be used to start fires.

If they’re directed at an aircraft within 10 kilometres of an airport the perpetrator can be fined up to $100,000 or sentenced to up to five years in jail or both, Samaddar said.

The latest incident happened Monday evening as the flight was approaching the airport over Kelowna General Hospital. The pilots could see that it was fired from a location about two blocks north of the Coast Capri Hotel but couldn’t pinpoint it more precisely.

READ MORE: Incoming Kelowna aircraft hit by laser

This is the fourth or fifth such incident in Kelowna this year, Samaddar said. Because of the COVID pandemic, the number of flights are down significantly this year from peak years.

“It’s more common than we would like to see,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t think people are actually thinking what they’re doing when they do that. They see an airplane and they say: ‘I’ll point this laser in the sky’ without realizing the potential harm it could cause.”

It’s worrying enough that the airport has set up a reporting protocol to inform the RCMP of such incidents. Anyone with information on what happened Monday night can call the Kelowna RCMP at 250-762-3300.


To contact a reporter for this story, email Rob Munro or call 250-808-0143 or email the editor. You can also submitphotos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

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Rob Munro

Rob Munro has a long history in journalism after starting an underground newspaper in Whitehorse called the Yukon Howl in 1980. He spent five years at the 100 Mile Free Press, starting in the darkroom, moving on to sports and news reporting before becoming the advertising manager. He came to Kelowna in 1989 as a reporter for the Kelowna Daily Courier, and spent the 1990s mostly covering city hall. For most of the past 20 years he worked full time for the union representing newspaper workers throughout B.C. He’s returned to his true love of being a reporter with a special focus on civic politics

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