Having said that, I will also point out that I think people are over-reacting. A typical laser pointer is not collimated well enough to hold a tight beam at any distance. 5 mw spread over even 1 square foot may appear bright but should not have enough power to cause eye damage.
The beam divergence though, even though it means that the beam won't be intense enough to cause permanent eye damage, is still going to be bright enough to be a distraction at a critical time period -- similar to shining a bright flashlight in someone's face that's trying to drive. The fact that the beam is more spread out due to the divergence means there's a higher chance of the beam hitting the pilot's face than a narrowly collimated "dot".
^ Wouldn't you only need to filter out the infrared waves?
Well, in the case of a green laser with crappy filtering, the IR isn't going to be much of an issue -- the optics are designed for green, since the IR is longer wavelength, it doesn't get focused the same, so instead of being collimated into the beam, it spreads out in a "cone" like a flashlight beam. Taking a photo of a poorly filtered laser with a IR-sensitive camera will show a fairly wide corona around the "spot", at longer range, the IR will be be spread out/lower intensity. At the distance if the airplane, the IR intensity will be insignificant.
The problem with IR comes from hitting yourself with a reflection at very close range, as you won't be able to tell where it is, and the IR hasn't spread out much. I would still be more worried about accidentally hitting yourself with a reflection of the green though, as that will be a lot more intense, and on a higher powered laser (esp. >10mW) do damage faster than one's reaction time.
Now, if someone actually pointed an IR laser at a plane, that would be a completely different story -- that would be the one more likely to cause eye damage, as it wouldn't be noticed, though it probably wouldn't dazzle the pilot the same way a green laser would due to a momentary "flash".
