Video still taken from JetBlue E190 flight deck jump seat shows Learjet 60 crossing the runway without authorization.
A Learjet 60 took off without clearance at Boston Logan International Airport despite the crew’s acknowledgment of instructions to line up and wait (LUAW), forcing a landing JetBlue Embraer E190 to go around as the business jet crossed in front of it, the NTSB found.
In the February 2023 incident, the Hop-a-Jet charter flight’s crew were told to LUAW on Runway 09 as the arriving JetBlue aircraft landed on the intersecting Runway 04. The Learjet crew “read back the controller’s instructions to LUAW, however they began the takeoff-roll instead,” the NTSB’s final report on the incident said. That triggered Boston’s airport surface detection equipment, model X system, prompting air traffic control to tell the JetBlue flight to go around.
The E190 initiated its go-around before passing over the runway intersection as the Learjet 60 was crossing Runway 04 and preparing to rotate. The two aircraft came closest just before JetBlue’s go-around started, as the E190 light was at about 30 ft. above ground level during its landing flare, investigators found.
An FAA report on the incident said the aircraft came within 331 ft. of each other. The agency classified the incident as a Category B incursion—the second most serious type. It is one of nine Category A or B incursions reported and categorized from Jan. 1-July 31, 2023, an FAA database shows. The database shows 10 occurred in the same time period in 2022.
NTSB cited the Learjet crew’s “taking off without a takeoff clearance” as the incident’s probable cause.
The Learjet’s captain, acting as pilot monitoring (PM), heard and acknowledged the LUAW instruction, he told investigators.
“We had the [LUAW] clearance ... probably I replied back, but [in] my mind I was clear for takeoff,” the captain wrote in his official statement. “I cannot understand what happened to me during the clearance,” he added, citing Boston’s “cold temperature” and his “not feeling completely well” as possible contributors.
The first officer (FO), acting as pilot flying, relied on the PM to confirm their clearances. “As we lined up, I asked my work partner if we were cleared for takeoff, and [he] said yes,” the FO wrote in his statement. “We were both convinced that we were cleared for takeoff, but that was not the case.”
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