Passenger jet nearly collides with drone in midair; lasers target planes

A passenger jet nearly collided midair with a drone at 2,700 feet as it approached New York's LaGuardia Airport on Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration says.

The crew of Shuttle America Flight 2708 reported climbing 200 feet to avoid a collision as the plane made its final approach to the airport around 11 a.m., according to Newsday. The jet, with 70 to 78 passenger seats, was arriving from Washington, D.C., and landed safely without any reported injuries.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the incident should be a wake-up call for stricter limits on drone use.

"Every drone that's sold in the United States, whether it's made here or abroad, can have built into the drone itself a mechanism that doesn't let it fly in certain places," Schumer said, according to NY1 News.

Meanwhile, hours before the drone incident, five commercial airline pilots reported being targeted by green lasers that were pointed at their planes over New York and New Jersey on Thursday night, the station reported. The green laser light is considered especially dangerous because it can travel for miles and temporarily blind a pilot. The incidents prompted a warning from air-traffic control, the station reported.

"To try to impede a pilot flying a commercial flight with lots of people on it with a laser is reckless, dangerous behavior," said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, according to NY1 News.

Schumer also called for the government to ban the lasers.

"Unless we do something, there's going to be something very serious and very bad that happens with these green lasers," he said.

Lasers and drones are perhaps the two biggest threats faced by the airline industry, Phil Derner Jr., an aviation research and consulting expert, told Fox News.

When laser beams hit a cockpit window, the glass acts like a prism and disperses the blinding light throughout the cockpit, he said.

Like bird strikes, the danger presented by drones is that they will get near a plane and be sucked into an engine, he told the network.

"Drones are stronger than birds, and people are flying them in restricted airspace more and more," Derner told Fox News. "It is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when one of these hits an aircraft."