Man jailed after aiming laser at Delta Air Lines plane

Vision of one of the pilots was affected for several hours after the incident involving James Link of Rochester, MN

A man who aimed a laser at a Delta Air Lines jet and put passengers in “incredible danger” has been sentenced for the crime.

A federal judge in Wisconsin on Thursday gave the man a two-year jail term for the incident that occurred in 2021.

James Link, 43, of Rochester, Minnesota, pleaded guilty in January this year to shining the laser at the plane.

On 29 October 2021, pilots of a Delta Air Lines plane flying from Raleigh-Durham to Minneapolis said they had been struck by a laser three times. They said the cockpit was lit up by a blue laser when they were flying at an altitude of 9,000ft just west of River Falls, Wisconsin.

The pilots at the time instructed air traffic control to change runways after the laser “caused major distraction in the cockpit as they were not able to look at their iPads to brief the new approach”, the US attorney’s office in Madison said in a statement published by the Justice Department.

The plane landed safely, but one of the captains said vision in his right eye was affected for several hours after the incident.

Air traffic control called a Minnesota State Patrol aircraft to investigate the incident, but its pilots were also struck by a blue laser as they circled above River Falls on the same night.

“Using the aircraft’s surveillance equipment, they were able to identify the suspect, coordinate with local law enforcement, and maintain a visual on the defendant until officers contacted him,” prosecutors said, according to the statement.

In a statement to the court, the captain of the flight noted the “sheer brightness” of the laser and compared it to “suddenly turning on all the lights in a dark room” when they were at a critical phase of the flight operations.

The captain told the court that “[o]ne minor mistake during this critical phase could have led to catastrophic results”.

US district judge William M Conley said the act of shining the laser at the aircraft was “incredibly dangerous and reckless” and put everyone on the aircraft in “incredible danger”.

The court also cited Link’s “extensive criminal record” which included “numerous domestic assaults” and an incident from 2017 in which he “shined and strobed a handheld flashlight in the eyes of the arresting officer”.

Incidents of striking lasers on planes and helicopters hit a record high in 2021, with a 41 per cent jump from the previous year, according to Federal Aviation Administration figures.