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Comment by snom380 | Hacker News Reader

And such weapons exist. And military pilots were helmets that protects against sunlight _and_ bright light. If lightning is anticipated, one of the pilots of an airliner will usually wear sunglasses to protect the night vision.

And it's a matter of eliminating contributing factors to accidents. Pilots have downed airplanes because of a malfunctioning pitot tube or fuel indicator light distracting them. People that don't get the laser pointer problem don't really understand why flying is so safe nowadays.

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> Pilots have downed airplanes because of a malfunctioning pitot tube or fuel indicator light distracting them.

To be fair, a malfunctioning pitot tube is a class of equipment failure that has had disastrous consequences, so I wouldn't put it in the same category as a distraction. Distraction is usually considered pilot error (or a fault of the design) as in Eastern Air 401 where the pilots were so focused on the landing gear light that they failed to notice one of them had disconnected the autopilot (due in part to a design issue).

I really don't mean to nitpick, but equipment failures are most definitely not analogous in this case. Mostly because you can do many things to reduce the likelihood of equipment failure, but distraction is very nearly impossible to eliminate.

I agree about equipment failure, I used those examples to point out that just because something has occurred several times before doesn't mean you can discount it as a potential contributing factor. A better example is the sterile cockpit rule. You can never eliminate distractions, but you can work on reducing them (though in a worst case scenario I believe that laser flashes can be more than just distractions).

Thank you. Now I see why it wasn't such an issue for the Egyptian pilots (see other comment). I can see why a military pilot would have such equipment, whereas a chopper transferring a kid to another hospital for a transplant probably wouldn't.

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