- A federal judge in Wisconsin sentenced a Minnesota man on Friday to two years in prison for aiming a laser at a Delta Air Lines jet in 2021, an act that prosecutors said disrupted the pilots’ efforts to land and put passengers in “incredible danger,” CBS News reports.
- According to the U.S. attorney’s office in Madison, the pilots of the Delta flight from Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, to Minneapolis on Oct. 29, 2021, reported that their cockpit was lit up three times by a bright blue laser while they were at an altitude of 9,000 feet just west of River Falls, Wisconsin. At the time, air traffic control had just instructed them to change runways, which required them to plot a new course to the Minneapolis airport.
- “The laser strikes caused a major distraction in the cockpit as they were not able to look at their iPads to brief the new approach,” prosecutors said in a statement.
