Beating the beams

In an instant, I lost my night vision. Nothing can prepare you for looking down at your instruments for reference only to see blackness. I could see a few bright lights in the distance and tried to level out my wings using them as a reference, but I was in for a ride! I put the airplane on the ground safely that night and tracked down the evidence to convict the man who pointed the laser at me.

The flight had started out as a quick trip to Arlington Municipal airport (AWO) to help my friend and fellow Jeep enthusiast John Marzulli put his hardtop on his Jeep for the winter. It was the Sunday before Thanksgiving, so it was getting dark early. John and I are part of a group of homebuilders in the Pacific Northwest who enjoy off-roading in the backcountry, with Zenith bush planes and Jeeps.

I take flying at night seriously. I had lost a co-worker to a night CFIT accident a few years prior who was also on a similar “milk run” to drop his airplane off at the avionics shop north of me. He had lost situational awareness and cut the corner into a mountain. Having synthetic vision and a moving map as well as IFR training, I believe, is essential for responsible night flying in our region. As I turned downwind, I used the menu buttons and touchscreen to dim the panel to a minimum so I would have less light distraction for landing. I did not know it at the time, but refreshing myself with the actions needed to change the brightness might have saved my life a few minutes later.

I continued the downwind leg and began setting up the airplane for the descent when I noticed some blue lights in an alley around a building. I thought it might be a police car and I looked down to see what was going on. Then I realized the light had become a beam and moved to fill my cockpit. All I could see was blue. I looked away but the beam kept following the airplane, bouncing off the white wings and filling the cockpit with intense blue light. I turned to face away and banked the airplane to put the belly to the laser. He still followed me. I leveled my wings with reference to the few distant bright lights, but I could not see the panel. The muscle memory from dimming the display just moments ago kicked in and I pushed the sequence of buttons and tapped around in the general area where the UI for brightening the screen had been until the screen became visible. I raised it to daylight levels so I could see.

In that moment I remembered watching an AOPA video by Dave Hirschman where he and Mike Filucci had blacked out the cockpit of a tandem airplane and flew zero-zero using only synthetic vision while Hirschman flew backseat as safety pilot with full visibility. They did three passes on the runway and two landings. While they said this was not something any lawyer or panel manufacturer would ever recommend, it did demonstrate it was possible that in an emergency this might be a way to survive.

I considered the alternative of a blind go-around, but I did not have a missed approach procedure loaded and I was low and was not sure what type of obstacle clearance I could expect, and I was at a perfectly good airport with a mile-long runway more than 100 feet wide with even more grass runway on the sides. I did not want to risk being lit up again by doing another pass in the pattern, so I committed to the plan, announced on the CTAF I had been hit by a laser, and gave my intentions. I would fly the EFIS down like I was flying a flight simulator.

I intercepted the extended centerline of the runway on the map and lined up for the final. I brought back the power and kept a smooth vertical speed, and as the EFIS showed me over the end of the runway, I slowly brought the throttle back to ease onto the runway. I touched down smoothly and put the brakes on. I was able to see enough of the taxi lights to find the taxiway and pull off.

I pulled over and sat for a while. I dimmed the EFIS back down and waited for my night vision to return and then taxied to my friend’s hangar. I focused on helping with the Jeep top and then we went out for a bite to eat. I was relieved I was safe on the ground; I was angry it happened. I felt helpless to do anything about it. Eventually I got back to the airport, and after making sure I could see well enough, I flew home uneventfully.

The next morning, I woke up looking at our white ceiling. The first thing I noticed was a dark off-color region in my vision and I was angry. I remembered hearing a podcast by Max Trescott about laser strikes and realized I needed to at least report it to the FAA. I went to my computer and found the FAA reporting site and filled out the forms. That was not enough. I had to do something more. I brought up the flight path on the ForeFlight Web app and then turned on the satellite mapping layer. There was empty land where the alley should have been. I brought up Google Maps with similar result. I then posted to our Flights Above the Pacific Northwest Facebook group asking if anyone else had been lit up. While waiting for a reply I decided to see if there was new imagery in Bing Maps and found aerial imagery and a street view of that square building with the alley around it. It was a storage facility. That meant there were fences. It also meant security cameras and PIN pads. I texted my boss at work and asked for the day off to follow up on this. I was on to something.

I had always considered laser strikes a minor annoyance and something I was hopeless to do anything about, but the same technology revolution that brought us ubiquitous and now ultra-bright lasers also brought us ADS-B tracking and recording, satellite mapping, digital street maps, street view imagery, business directories, and of course, cameras looking at you from everywhere. The same tools I use to flight plan and track my flights could also be used to track where the laser came from.

I looked up the name of the storage facility, but the name had changed since the images were taken, so I used the maps to find the name of the new business and get the phone number. I called the manager of the storage facility and explained what had happened. They were livid that someone would use their facility to commit a crime. They offered to look through the tapes, and I gave them the exact time from the ADS-B track and left my contact information with them.

In the meantime, several people had commented on my Facebook post and one was a flight instructor who was flying near Arlington in a Cessna 172 and got lit up as well. His student was flying while he took video from his phone while shielded behind the door. The video showed the same square building and alley where I had been lit up from. I got the time of his strike and called the storage facility back. Later the manager called back with great news. She had both events on video, and had the name, address, and license plate number of the perpetrator.

I realized by now that this would be a treasure trove of information for law enforcement. Rather than pick up the video tapes myself I talked to the airport manager and the local police and connected them with the manager of the storage facility to make sure they handed off the evidence directly. In addition, I took all the photos, flight tracks, and the video from the CFI and mailed them to the police and the local flight standards district office, which I had already contacted about the laser strike.

Using these modern tools it had taken less than 24 hours to go from hopelessness to providing evidence for a slam-dunk case. Then there were my eyes. I still had the blotch in my vision, and it was not going away. I made a doctor’s appointment, and they did a bundle of tests. I was lucky that there wasn’t extensive damage, and after a few appointments and several weeks the spots faded from my vision.

After transferring the evidence to the police department where the storage facility was located detectives arrested the suspect and he was charged with two counts under state law. Because of the multiple counts, strong evidence, and resultant injury to my vision, the U.S. attorney picked up the case and got a federal indictment on two counts of pointing a laser at an airplane. Eventually the suspect pleaded guilty to the two counts and will serve eight months in prison and court-ordered drug rehabilitation.

There are several lessons I learned from this ordeal. Flight at night has special dangers. Preparation and the right equipment to support your situational awareness can save your life. You can buy glasses that can protect your eyes from laser exposure but should also know how to deal with a sudden loss of night vision as well. All the instruments in the world won’t help if you can’t see them. Also reporting a laser strike to the FAA, police, and social media can help even if you don’t track down the evidence yourself. Your reports can help connect the responsible party to other laser attacks and that can lead to them being taken off the street. Don’t just become another statistic. Fight back!

Jonathan Fay is a private pilot from Anacortes, Washington, and owner of a Zenith Cruzer.