The FAA is breaking years-long government silence about the potential dangers of lasers to aircraft, passengers and the pilots who fly them—and issuing "fresh advice" to the aviation community on dealing with the perils of lasers. The advice, likely to come in the form of an Advisory Circular, is to be published this week and marks what an FAA spokesperson believes to be the agency's first "official" word on lasers. The move is timely. Since the end of 2004, concerns about the use of lasers as a terrorist tool heightened with reports of 10 incidents in which transport pilots were "lased"—meaning a laser was beamed from the ground, either by accident or deliberately—to an aircraft and was bright enough to distract, star-tle or disorient the crew.
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