Photo Reveals Chilling Near Miss at Boston Airport

A chilling near miss as a charter Learjet zipped in front of a JetBlue airliner at Boston's airport was dramatically captured in a cockpit photo released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The JetBlue aircraft was only 30 feet off the ground, preparing to touch down earlier this year, when the Hop-a-Jet Worldwide charter crossed in front of it as it took off from its own, intersecting, runway, the NTSB noted in its investigative report, which included the photo.

The charter aircraft appears as a blur in front of the JetBlue windshield.

The JetBlue pilots were forced to abort their landing and instantly climbed after spotting the charter aircraft.

The flight landed a short time later without incident. No one was injured in the near miss.

The NTSB report concluded that the crew on the charter jet had triggered the frightening runway incident on Feb. 27.

An air-traffic controller had told the charter jet’s pilots to wait on the runway, but the crew misunderstood and took off, the board determined.

The pilot told NTSB investigators he was stumped by his actions. In "my mind I was cleared for takeoff," he told the NTSB.

“I cannot understand what happened to me during the clearance,” he said in an email to the agency that was also released Thursday.

“The only thing that comes to my mind is that the cold temperature in Boston affected me, I was not feeling completely well and had a stuffed nose," he added.

The episode was one of an unexplained surge in high-risk runway incidents that occurred early this year.

The near-misses triggered the creation of a special safety review team by the Federal Aviation Administration to investigate the issue.

There have been nine serious situations so far this year involving airlines that were rated as severe by the FAA or that prompted NTSB investigations —about twice the annual average since 2018.