Southwest reports laser on final to Oakland.

[Squawk 7700]

Southwest Airlines flight 1578 from San Diego to Oakland reports green laser on final.

10 miles out puts the laser in the vicinity of the Union City / Hayward border near Whipple Road and the 880 freeway.

Incident occurred Saturday June 7, 2008 9:45 PDT.

Audio retrieved from the archives and edited for time using Audacity.

[aviator_06]

This isn't the first time i've heard of this. What is the deal?

[KSYR-pjr]

This isn't the first time i've heard of this. What is the deal?

The modern day equivalent of bored teenagers throwing snowballs at passing cars.

[Jacko]

Funilly enough there has been a lot of news about this here, I think now you can only buy lasers upto 1 milliwatt in power, higher then that its illegal.

[GhostRider]

For your info, here is one of the brands I have seen:

http://www.optotronics.com/

I have a friend that has a 300 mW one; it is the size of a flashlight.  He is very responsible with it (uses it for music entertainment) but it could easily hit an aircraft or pilot of an aircraft and possibly have adverse affects, to put it mildly.

[Jacko]

More on Laser pointers, as it turns out my brother heard on the grapevine out at TMW (Tamworth Airport) CASA arrested a few people after they recieved warnings of using Laser Beams, they thought they would be smart and do it again. That will teach them to use a laser pointer again.

The moral of the story is don't be so stupid and if you have a laser pointer use them for what they are intended to be used for and don't go shining them at planes, its not only a criminal offence but is also very dangerous and distracting to the pilots

[dayliteflite]

A think there should be a severe penalty for intentionally shining a laser at an aircraft. It is a stupid, irresponsible and extremely dangerous thing to do.

[dave]

And it's a felony.

"Interfering with aircraft" in any fashion carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Dave

[SFOetthekid]

Hmm... I remember hearing this similar incident with a green laser occuring to some planes coming in to SFO about a few months back.