PLEASE BE A DIM BULB NEAR THE AIRPORT: Pilot landing at Svalbard Airport blinded by bright car lights, officials say

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People driving within the vicinity of Svalbard Airport are being asked by officials to not have their bright headlines on after a pilot reported being blinded by them while landing Sunday.

“We had a case on Sunday where the plane that came in for landing was dazzled by bright lights on a car that was on its way out towards Bjørndalen,” Police Chief Lt. Håkon Toresen said in a prepared statement Monday. “The (driver) in question did not do anything criminal and it was all unintentional, but we still encourage people who drive with bright lights to dim them when they drive in the area around the airport.”

Among the problems for pilots is they can lose their night vision and orientation, said Kenneth Landsem, the airport’s assistant operations manager.

“This is very unfortunate and can, in the worst case, have catastrophic consequences,” he said.

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.

marksabbatini@yahoo.com

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