Pilot blindly lands plane after eyes are damaged by laser aimed into cockpit, US feds say

A pilot blindly landed a two-person airplane after a bright blue laser beam was aimed into the cockpit, damaging his eyes soon before landing, federal prosecutors said.

Christopher W. Harris is accused of tracking the plane with his laser, illuminating the cockpit for around 12 to 13 seconds before the pilot managed to land at Arlington Airport in Washington the evening of Nov 20, 2022, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington.

“I had to figure out how to land,” pilot Jonathon Fay said at a sentencing hearing for Harris held on Jan 5.

“If I had been flying an older aircraft without the instrument visual aids, I likely would not have survived … By the grace of God, I have no permanent vision loss,” Fay added.

He needed medical treatment after the laser beam went directly into his eyes, according to prosecutors.

Nearly two-and-a-half hours after the laser left Fay “unable to see” his plane’s instrument panel, Harris aimed the laser pointer at a four-seat plane flown by a student pilot and obscured their vision, prosecutors said.

The student’s flight instructor took photos of the beam entering the cockpit, according to the attorney’s office.

The Federal Aviation Administration and Arlington police ultimately learned Harris flashed the beams from a storage facility nearly 1.5 miles away from Arlington Airport, prosecutors said.

US District Judge Richard A. Jones has sentenced Harris, 41, of Snohomish County, to eight months in prison for two counts of aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft, the attorney’s office announced in a Jan 5 news release.

At the hearing, Jones, while referring to Fay, told Harris “you almost killed this man”.

“He has a family and people who depend on him. He could have wound up in a fatal crash. … There must be consequences for what you did,” Jones said.

Jones ordered Harris to undergo addiction and mental health treatment as part of his sentencing, according to the attorney’s office.

Gregory Geist, Harris’ federal public defender, told McClatchy News on Jan 8 that his client has an “extensive and documented substance use disorder.”

The Federal Detention Center at SeaTac, where Harris will serve his sentence, “does not have the ability to provide meaningful treatment” for him, Geist said.

Harris “already served 4.5 months in custody” there, and his “future time in custody at the FDC delays his ability to receive treatment in the most effective manner”, Geist added.

In two handwritten apology letters addressed to Fay and the student pilot, Harris wrote ahead of his sentencing that he was “deeply sorry”, according to a memorandum submitted on his behalf by Geist.

“My mom flys several times a year to California taking care of her 93-year-old mother. I would be devastated if she died in a plane crash,” Harris wrote. “So I (sincerely) apologize for any harm I could have (potentially) caused that night and I hope you can forgive me.”

Pilot recalls the ‘laser attack’

In an Aviation News Talk podcast episode on Oct 12, 2023, Fay recounts how he was “practically blind” during the “laser attack.”

That evening, Fay was flying a small 750 Cruzer Zenith aircraft at around 500 feet and “preparing to land” when Harris pointed the laser at the plane, prosecutors wrote in sentencing documents.

Fay built the aircraft himself with “very big glass bubble doors”, he told podcast host Max Trescott.

“All the way from the floor to the ceiling, is just a glass bubble, so you essentially have no place to hide from a laser,” Fay said.

He described how the laser beam “spilled completely in through all the windows” when it was aimed at him.

Fay ultimately landed the plane by switching to the backlight on the aircraft’s instrument screen, according to prosecutors.

As for the student pilot, they were also able to “safely land”, despite Harris pointing the laser at their plane, US Attorney Tessa M. Gorman said.

The next morning, Fay worried he had permanent eye damage and sought medical treatment, he said on the Aviation News Talk podcast.

He noticed “shadowing” in his vision for at least a few weeks before it gradually faded away, he said.

Harris was arrested more than two weeks later on Dec 9, 2022, after authorities identified him, according to prosecutors.

Assistant US Attorney Jocelyn Cooley requested that the court sentence Harris to one year and one day in prison before he was sentenced to eight months instead, according to the attorney’s office.

“Mr Harris’s behaviour in this case is particularly concerning,” Cooley wrote before the Jan 5 hearing. “This was not one poor decision by Mr Harris. The two incidents are separated by approximately two-and-a-half hours. Mr Harris left the storage facility after lasering the first plane before returning to laser the second plane.”

His prison sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, prosecutors said.

Arlington is about 45 miles northeast of Seattle. – The Charlotte Observer/Tribune News Service