A Virgin Atlantic flight headed for JFK was forced to turn around and land back at Heathrow Airport in London last night after some jerk shined a laser at it, and possibly injured a pilot.
Virgin Flight 025 was carrying 252 passengers and 15 crew members when it took off from London shortly before 8 p.m. Audio posted by an air traffic monitoring website apparently captured the exchange between a pilot and a London air traffic controller.
"We have a medical issue with one of the pilots after a laser incident after takeoff and we're going to return to Heathrow," the pilot says in the recording.
The plane reportedly turned around starting when it reached the west coast of Ireland.
Passenger Bethany McHutchinson told Sky News: "I think it's really scary, whether it was by accident or on purpose. If anything had happened, if it had been really serious, it could have put everyone's lives on the plane in danger."
A spokeswoman for the airline said the affected pilot was taken to a hospital as a "precautionary measure," but did not provide further details about his or her condition.
Virgin apologized for the inconvenience and put up affected passengers at hotels overnight. They are expected to fly out today.
"We are working with the authorities to identify the source of the laser," the company said in a statement.
London leads the U.K. for number of reported laser-jerk strikes, with 48 in the first half of 2015. New York is also a hotbed of laser-idiot activity. The Federal Aviation Administration logged 160 "laser events" at JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports from the beginning of 2015 to December 11th.
