WASHINGTON (TND) — The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed it is investigating a runway incursion at Boston's Logan International Airport on Monday. It's the fifth near-collision at an airport in the U.S. this year.
The incident occurred "when a Learjet 60 began a takeoff roll as a JetBlue Embraer 190 was preparing to land on an intersecting runway. No damage or injuries were reported," the NTSB tweeted Wednesday night.
The Federal Aviation Administration said its preliminary review found the pilot of the Learjet took off without clearance.
Shahidi said the NTSB and FAA will likely have more preliminary results in a matter of weeks but typically a full investigation takes several months. As investigators probe what happened in Boston, Shahidi said they will look for any patterns with similar incidents this year in Burbank, Austin, Honolulu and New York City.
A key part of the investigations, Shahidi said, will be the pilots' training.
“How many hours did the pilots have? What is the recency of their flights? And many other aspects of training and competency and determine if that aspect had anything to do with this," he said.Last month, FAA Acting Administrator Bill Nolen issued a memo to the FAA Management Board titled "FAA Safety Call to Action, which read, in part: "We are experiencing the safest period in aviation history, but we cannot take this for granted. Recent events remind us that we must not become complacent. Now is the time to stare into the data and ask hard questions," the memo said.
Nolen formed a safety review team that will hold a "Safety Summit" this month with industry leaders and labor partners. The Commercial Aviation Safety Team has also been instructed to examine the administration's data sharing system to look for indicators of emerging trends in recent incidents. Nolen said he has also instructed the Air Traffic Organization to gauge its internal standards and processes for opportunities to improve coordination with the FAA Aviation Safety organization.
“I think it’s important to recognize that we have a very safe air transportation system in this country. We have thousands of flights departing and arriving safely at their destination every day and we have air traffic controllers and we have pilots that are professional and are doing their job very well," Shahidi said.As airlines deal with pilot shortages, some have called for the FAA to revise its standard requiring pilots to log 1,500 hours of flight time before they can fly commercially, with an exception for certain military service. Last year the FAA rejected the proposal and during a nomination hearing Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, President Joe Biden's nominee for FAA administrator Philip Washington told members he'd do the same.
“If confirmed, I will not deviate from that standard," Washington said. “I have never, especially as a command sergeant major believed in lowering the standard. I believed in bringing people up to the standard and that is very, very important so I would not deviate from that standard.”The FAA is also investigating a turbulence incident Wednesday night that resulted in seven people hospitalized with minor injuries. According to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, a Lufthansa flight from Austin, Texas to Frankfurt, Germany was forced to divert to Dulles International Airport after experiencing severe turbulence.
Shahidi said data shows the aircraft was flying at 37,000 feet when it dropped about 4,000 feet during the dinner service.
“For turbulence as we’ve seen like last night and other turbulences, especially at that altitude, at high altitude, these cannot be predicted," he said. “The pilots actually did a great job by diverting to Dulles, landing and taking care of the injured passengers and the flight attendants who were injured.”
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