A charter flight pilot cited in a near collision with a JetBlue plane says he was told to wait — but in his mind, he was 'clear for takeoff'

Screen capture from jump-seat occupant’s video recording showing Lear 60 crossing runway centerline (left), and Flight tracks of both JetBlue (JBU206) and Hop-a-Jet (HPJ280) with yellow circle indicating incursion area (right)

National Transportation Safety Board

• A charter pilot was cited for taking off without clearance, leading to a near-collision with a JetBlue plane.
• The pilot told the NTSB he was "not feeling completely well and had a stuffed nose."
• According to the FAA, runway incursions peaked between late 2022 and earlier this year.

A charter pilot has been cited by the National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, for taking off without clearance — and nearly causing a collision with a JetBlue plane in Boston in February.

Pilot Alvaro Donado, who was flying for aircraft rental service Hop-a-Jet, was instructed to line up and wait by a tower controller at Boston's Logan International Airport on February 27, according to the NTSB's investigation report released Thursday.

The flight crew even read the controller's instructions back. Even so, the charter plane began its takeoff, narrowly missing a JetBlue flight about to land.

Donado, the 63-year-old pilot, told the NTSB in an emailed statement published with the investigation report: "I can not understand what happened to me during the clearance, 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."

"On my mind, I was clear for takeoff," Donado wrote in the email. 

The takeoff forced a JetBlue flight — that had previously been cleared to land on an intersecting runway — to abort its landing and perform a go-around.

The plane was only 30 feet off the ground when it did so, per the report.

A screen grab from a video shot by an occupant of JetBlue's jump seat, released as part of the investigation report, appears to show the charter plane crossing the runway in front of the larger aircraft.

The JetBlue plane was an Embraer E90 and seats up to 114 passengers. No injuries were reported, per the NTSB.

This event is one of six incidents involving near-collisions in airports that the NTSB is investigating this year.

A Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson told Insider in May that runway incursions peaked between late 2022 and earlier this year at 33 incursions per 1 million takeoffs and landings across the US.

Takeoffs and landings are the most dangerous parts of a flight, according to research by Boeing, as reported by Insider in 2019. Although takeoffs and landings take up only 4% of a flight's duration, they account for nearly half of all fatal accidents, Insider reported at the time.

In response to Insider's request for comment, the NTSB referred to its investigation docket and report of the incident. 

Pilot Alvaro Donado, Hop-a-Jet, and JetBlue did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

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