Engineering360: "Laser Strike App Designed to Enhance Aviation Safety"

How bright is a 5 mW laser at 5 miles, anyway? I can't believe it's much more than a glimmer amongst the myriad city lights. Also, unless you're really off to the side, which greatly increases the distance, you don't have line of sight to the pilots' eyes. Unless you had a tracking device to lock it onto the plane, it's impossible to hold it on the plane at that distance by hand, anyway, which means they'd just see an occasional flicker when you happened to hit somewhere near the cockpit, perhaps reflecting off the ceiling mounted controls.