Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

To pre­vent a plane crash, the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (CAA) is warn­ing the pub­lic to re­frain from flash­ing laser lights at air­craft in flight. CAA's di­rec­tor gen­er­al Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al and oth­er of­fi­cials on Tues­day said pi­lots had been com­plain­ing of bright lights which were be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly di­rect­ed at air­craft.In an in­ter­view at the CAA's of­fice at Gold­en Grove Road in Pi­ar­co, Lutch­me­di­al said in the last two months there had been close to 20 re­ports from pi­lots.

He said when it oc­curred, pi­lots suf­fered mo­men­tary blind­ness and were forced to close their eyes or look away.Lutch­me­di­al said: "We felt it was nec­es­sary to alert mem­bers of the pub­lic to de­sist from flash­ing these lights be­cause it could cause a plane to crash."De­pend­ing on the pow­er of some of the laser lights, Lutch­me­di­al said they could be aimed at an ob­ject from miles.

The CAA's ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er, safe­ty reg­u­la­tions, Fran­cis Reg­is, said any­one found guilty of com­mit­ting such an act which vi­o­lat­ed laws gov­ern­ing Civ­il Avi­a­tion could be pe­nalised by the court.Reg­is said the CAA had re­ceived com­plaints in the last two years. How­ev­er, in re­cent times the prob­lem had es­ca­lat­ed.He said the flash­ing was done es­pe­cial­ly around fes­tive oc­ca­sions.

"We have been li­ais­ing with the po­lice," he said."How­ev­er, it is dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine ex­act­ly who and where the lights are com­ing from."He said per­pe­tra­tors could be fined a max­i­mum of $10,000 or one year in prison.

Reg­is added the in­dis­crim­i­nate flash­ing con­sti­tut­ed a safe­ty haz­ard to the op­er­a­tion of air­craft and nav­i­ga­tion in T&T.