Federal investigators said Thursday that the pilot of a charter plane took off without permission, causing it to pass near a JetBlue plane preparing to land on a runway at Boston’s Logan International Airport in February.
A screenshot from JetBlue cockpit video captures the moment the Learjet operated by Hop-A-Jet charter service crossed the runway right in front of the JetBlue plane.
The pilots of the JetBlue Embraer jet estimated that they were about 30 feet from the ground when they saw a plane cross in front of them; the captain said he couldn’t estimate how close they were to the smaller plane, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report. The JetBlue pilots were able to stop, turn around and land safely.
The Hop-A-Jet captain said he heard air traffic controllers tell him to line up and wait before taking off, and even repeated the order to the controller, “but in their mind, they were cleared to take off,” the Hop-A-Jet captain said. NTSB.
The Hop-A-Jet plane was being operated by the co-pilot, who told investigators that his captain had told him they were cleared to take off.
The captain, Álvaro Donado, said in statements to the security board: “I cannot understand what happened to me during the clearance, the only thing that comes to mind is that the cold in Boston affected me, I did not feel at all well and had a stuffy nose. My apologies.”
After the Hop-A-Jet plane landed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the Boston tower told the 63-year-old captain and 23-year-old co-pilot that they had taken off without authorization and that the JetBlue plane had passed about 120 meters (400 feet) above them while performing a go-around, the NTSB said in its final report.
A man who answered the phone at Hop-A-Jet’s headquarters said the company had no comment on the incident or the report. When asked if the captain and co-pilot were still flying for the company, he said he couldn’t provide that information and hung up.
The incident was one of several earlier this year that raised alarm bells about aviation safety in the United States despite the fact that there has not been a fatal crash involving a US airline since 2009. The plane incidents that nearly run into led the Federal Aviation Administration to convene a “safety summit” in March to think of ways to prevent planes from getting too close.
