On Saturday, a Delta Airlines flight from Dallas reversed its descent into Logan around 11:30 a.m. to avoid an American Airlines plane readying for takeoff. The two aircrafts came within 900 feet of each other, in part because of misdirection from air traffic control, experts said.
“They cleared the [American] aircraft for takeoff and then completely forgot that they cleared the aircraft for takeoff,” said Michael McCormick, an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and a former control tower operator at the Federal Aviation Administration. “In terms of how bad of an event this is, this is pretty bad.”
Then, another less-serious incident made headlines on Sunday: An inbound Delta flight approached a plane on the runway at around 5:45 p.m., before ascending again.
The FAA said in a statement that the incident was considered a “go-around” and not a so-called close call because “the required separation was maintained” between the planes.
A Globe analysis of FAA data found that over the last two decades, Boston has had three high-risk runway incursions, or instances where there is a significant chance of collision. That put Logan tied for the fifth-most high-risk runway incursions among the nation’s busiest airports during that period.
The airport also had roughly 350 low-risk incursions, giving Logan the fourth-most since 2006 behind O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Los Angeles International Airport, and Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina.
The FAA has designated four intersections at Logan as crash-prone hot spots, locations with a a history or potential risk of collision. Both weekend incidents took place in or adjacent to a hot spot, the Globe found.
All things considered, Logan has a reputation for upholding passenger safety, said John Goglia, a Boston-based aviation consultant who previously served on the National Transportation Safety Board. “What they do is over and above.”
“But only by the grace of God, a disaster didn’t happen” on Saturday when the two planes got within 900 feet of one another, he said. “It’s only by the grace of God.”
The Saturday incident is under investigation by the FAA and the NTSB. Galen Munroe, a spokesperson for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, declined to comment, citing the pending investigation.
The Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates Logan, directed questions to the FAA.
US Representative Stephen Lynch, a South Boston Democrat, said he has asked the NTSB to expand its investigation of last Saturday’s incident — what he called a “serious runway incursion” — to include the second incident on Sunday.
“The industry has ways of talking about this that doesn’t give full measure to the danger involved,” said Lynch. “They call these ‘near misses,’ but they’re actually near collisions. I think because they happen somewhat regularly, they trigger less alarm than they probably warrant. That’s why we have to do this full investigation into both incidents.”
Hassan Shahidi, president of the aviation safety nonprofit Flight Safety Foundation, said incursions at Logan and beyond are “rare in the scheme of all departures or arrivals at these busy airports” that see hundreds of daily flights.
“That said,” Shahidi added, “one [incident] is one too many from our perspective.”
The incidents happened in the midst of Boston’s busy summer tourist season, with the World Cup underway and the country’s 250th anniversary approaching.
An audio recording from the Saturday incident exposed miscommunication in the air traffic control tower. A controller reported that the Delta flight would be aborting its landing and circling around, before another controller chimed in to express confusion about the American Airlines plane’s redirection.
“American 3161, where you going? You’re cleared for takeoff, 3161,” the second controller said.
Two of the aviation experts, Goglia and McCormick, said air traffic control staffing could be a part of what went wrong Saturday.
There are 28 air traffic controllers at Logan, or roughly 85 percent of what the FAA’s considers the target need, publicly available data show. That’s an improvement from a 10-year low of 65 percent in early 2021.
US Representative Seth Moulton, a Salem Democrat and a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said in a statement that the weekend incidents were “another sign that our air traffic controllers are stretched too thin and need more support.”
“What happened at Logan is a concerning sign that we haven’t learned the proper lessons still since the tragedies that occurred at DCA and LaGuardia,” he said.
A deadly midair crash killed 67 people in Washington, D.C., in January 2025. A flight into LaGuardia Airport in March 2026 slammed into a fire truck upon landing and killed both pilots.
R. John Hansman, director of the MIT International Center for Air Transportation, an aviation research hub, said the so-called go-around reported Sunday is likely not of concern. He said go-arounds similar to the one last weekend happen in about one out of 1,000 landings at US airports, or hundreds of times each day. The plane’s altitude of 425 feet at the time of the maneuver was not unusual, he added, considering that some go-arounds occur safely at altitudes of less than 100 feet.
“They can happen because someone is on the runway in front of you. It can be a deer on the runway, or because they detect a foreign object on the runway, or you decide your speeds are not correct,” Hansman said.
On Sunday, “the system worked correctly,” he added. “It doesn’t seem like anything is going on.”
Diti Kohli can be reached at diti.kohli@globe.com. Follow her @ditikohli_. Chris Serres can be reached at chris.serres@globe.com. Follow him @ChrisSerres. Scooty Nickerson can be reached at scooty.nickerson@globe.com. Claire Thornton can be reached at claire.thornton@globe.com. Follow Claire on X @claire_thornto.
