MEDFORD, Ore. – The FBI is investigating a report by a SkyWest crew who say two laserlike rays of light beamed into the cockpit of their plane as they attempted to land at the Medford airport Christmas night.
The lights appeared as the United Express plane began its descent at about 8:20 p.m. Dec. 25. The FBI offered no explanation for the unusual sighting.
“It’s just a suspicious event at this point,” Beth Anne Steele, an FBI spokeswoman in Portland.
The pilots described the light as a laser that entered the cockpit from the chief officer’s window and did not move off the aircraft, said Alison Gemmell, director of marketing and communication for SkyWest Airlines. The pilots reported the event to airport tower personnel, and the FBI was called in as a routine matter of notification, Gemmell said.
SkyWest has also filed its own report, she added.
Several passengers on the flight from San Francisco confirmed they saw the light through their porthole windows as the plane was about two miles south of the airport’s runway, Gemmell said.
The oddity did not disrupt normal business at the airport and the plane was able to land safely, Steele said.
A bulletin issued in November by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned police agencies nationwide that terrorist groups have shown an interest in using laser beams to bring down planes.
Laser beams pointed at pilots can affect their eyesight. In September, a Delta Air Lines pilot reported damage to his retina from a laser beam shone at him during a landing in Salt Lake City.
It is against federal law to intentionally shine a laser beam at a commercial airliner.
Meteorologists toyed with the possibility that the light in Medford could have been Saint Elmo’s fire, a luminous discharge of electricity into the atmosphere. The phenomenon can be observed during thunderstorms, snowstorms or dust storms as a fiery jet extending from objects such as wings.
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