It's not like that. At that distance, the beam is wide enough to cover a large part of the cockpit, not to mention the glare. It's literally blinding light.

Have you ever had a truck flash its lights at you at night? It's like that, but much, much stronger, and you're in the most sensitive part of the flight, when if you fuck up, you crash.

What pilots are trained to do is switch off all the lights, so the idiot can't see you and can no longer easily hit you with the laser. You can imagine that's not safe either.

Maybe Mentour pilot plunged him into a deep rabbit hole

I wonder if it’s in reaction to people shining lasers at suspected ‘UAPs’ that are almost all planes.

when the legal system stops prosecuting extremely negligent companies for hurting innocent bystanders in pursuit of prof... shit.

You say that, but once someone on the ground was shining a bright ass flashlight, not a laser but just as bright, at us and they were flashing ...---... (SOS in Morse). Apparently we were the 4th plane to report it to air traffic control. I've never seen that before or since, but at least that time it worked.

https://www.laserpointersafety.com/latest-stats/latest-stats.html

l'd assume not, given that the rate of incidents appears to be generally increasing. Unless there are just a lot of new people who really badly want to shine a laser for the first time at an airplane each year.