FAA INVESTIGATES NEAR MISS BETWEEN PLANES AT BOSTON'S LOGAN AIRPORT

Two Aircraft, Several Hundred Feet, and a Split-Second Decision

On Saturday, June 20, 2026, at approximately 11:30am local time, a Delta Air Lines pilot on final approach to Boston Logan International Airport made the kind of split-second decision that exists precisely because aviation safety systems are built to allow for it: rather than complete the landing, the crew aborted and climbed away, executing what is known in aviation terminology as a go-around. The reason was an American Airlines flight accelerating for takeoff on an intersecting runway at the same moment. The Federal Aviation Administration has now opened an investigation into the incident.

According to flight tracking data analysed by CNN using Flightradar24, the two aircraft came within several hundred feet of each other — close enough, and at a sensitive enough phase of flight, that aviation safety experts have classified the event as a serious runway incursion, a category that sits at the top of the FAA's investigative priorities.

What Happened, Minute by Minute

The aircraft involved were Delta Air Lines Flight 2351, arriving from Dallas with 129 passengers and six crew members aboard an Airbus A319, and American Airlines Flight 3161, which was cleared for takeoff on a runway that intersected with the one Delta's flight was landing on. Some accounts place the Delta jet as close as approximately 450 feet from touchdown at the moment its crew made the decision to abort the landing and climb away.

The sequence of events, as reconstructed from air traffic control audio captured by ATC.com, included a moment of apparent confusion in the tower itself: an air traffic controller can be heard asking the departing American Airlines flight where it was going, to which the pilot responded that the tower had cleared the aircraft for takeoff. This exchange — a controller seemingly questioning a departure clearance moments after issuing it, or being unaware that it had been issued — sits at the centre of what investigators will need to determine: where exactly in the chain of communication and clearance the breakdown occurred.

Delta's crew, having identified the conflict, performed what the airline described as a safely executed go-around manoeuvre. The aircraft climbed away, rejoined the airport's landing sequence under continued air traffic control direction, and completed a subsequent approach without further incident. Passengers deplaned normally, according to a Delta spokesperson, and no injuries were reported on either flight. American Airlines, for its part, deferred all questions about the incident to the FAA rather than commenting directly.

Understanding the Go-Around: Routine Procedure, Serious Trigger

It's worth being precise about what did and did not happen here, because the terminology involved can sound more alarming — or less alarming — than the underlying event actually was, depending on how it's framed.

A go-around, in itself, is an entirely standard and frequently used aviation safety procedure. As CNN's reporting explains, it refers to discontinuing a landing approach and beginning an immediate climb, followed by further air traffic control instructions, rather than continuing toward touchdown. Go-arounds happen daily across the US aviation system and are used to prevent runway incursions as well as to respond to a range of other hazards, including sudden wind shifts or approaches that simply aren't shaping up safely for any number of reasons. Michael McCormick, a former FAA air traffic manager, has noted that while go-arounds can feel jarring to passengers experiencing one, they remain a common and unremarkable part of how the aviation system maintains its safety margins.

What elevates this particular go-around from routine to investigation-worthy is not the manoeuvre itself, but its trigger: a runway incursion, which the FAA defines as any unauthorised presence of an aircraft, vehicle, or person on an active runway. Runway incursions are considered among the highest-risk categories of airport operational event precisely because the reaction window during landing or takeoff is extremely limited — pilots and controllers have seconds, not minutes, to identify a conflict and resolve it safely. The fact that this incident occurred with one aircraft already in the most sensitive phase of its final approach, only a few hundred feet from the runway, is what has placed it at the top of the FAA's investigative priority list rather than treating it as a routine, unremarkable go-around.

Logan's Runway Geometry: A Structural Risk Factor

Boston Logan's physical layout is itself a relevant piece of context for understanding why incidents of this kind recur at this particular airport more than at some others. According to Prism News' reporting, Logan operates six runways aligned in three different directions, including intersecting-runway configurations that can force arrivals and departures into especially tight coordination whenever traffic volume is high — precisely the kind of layout in which a single miscommunication or clearance error has the potential to put two aircraft on a collision course within a matter of seconds.

The FAA and the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates Logan, have both treated runway safety at the airport as a significant, longstanding operational priority for this reason. The airport is currently in the middle of FAA-required infrastructure work on Runway 9-27, which Massport says includes two separate 75-day closures — one that began on September 2, 2025, and a second scheduled to begin July 1, 2026 — work that is itself part of the broader effort to address runway safety and capacity issues at one of the busiest and most structurally complex airports in the northeastern United States.

Not an Isolated Incident: A Pattern at Logan and Beyond

This is, notably, not the first time in 2026 that a near-collision on Logan's runways has prompted an FAA investigation. In March 2026, a separate incident saw a Delta flight operated by Republic Airways — carrying roughly 100 passengers and bound for New York's JFK Airport — abort its takeoff roll after another aircraft crossed into its path while snow was falling at the airport. A passenger on that flight described the aircraft braking hard just seconds before what would have been takeoff, narrowly avoiding the other plane, reported to be approximately 200 yards away at the time.

The recurrence of this type of incident at Logan specifically, within the same calendar year, reinforces the point that runway coordination at the airport remains a persistent operational challenge that the FAA continues to monitor closely, even as both incidents were ultimately resolved without injury or aircraft damage through the successful execution of standard abort and go-around procedures.

CNN's reporting situates Saturday's incident within an even broader national pattern, describing it as "the latest in a recent spate of aviation-related incidents" across the United States — a period that has included four dramatic plane crashes, what CNN characterises as the "ever-worsening problem" of turbulence-related incidents, and a number of strikingly similar close-call and go-around investigations at other airports. This broader context matters: while flying remains, by every available statistical measure, an exceptionally safe mode of transportation, 2026 has seen a sufficiently dense cluster of aviation safety incidents that each individual event — including Saturday's close call at Logan — is now being read by both regulators and the public against the backdrop of a system that appears to be under unusually sustained scrutiny.

What the FAA Investigation Will Examine

FAA runway incursion investigations typically focus on three core areas: the performance and adequacy of system safeguards designed to prevent exactly this kind of conflict, controller workload at the time of the incident, and the underlying airport infrastructure and runway configuration that shaped how the conflict developed. No mechanical failures have been reported in connection with Saturday's incident, which directs investigative attention more squarely toward the human and procedural dimensions of the event — specifically, how and why an American Airlines aircraft came to be cleared for takeoff on a runway that intersected with one a Delta aircraft was actively landing on, and why the apparent confusion captured in the tower's radio exchange with the American Airlines pilot occurred.

Boston Logan, American Airlines, and Massport have all directed inquiries about the specifics of the incident to the FAA, which has formally acknowledged the event and confirmed its investigation is underway. As is standard practice for incidents of this kind, the FAA has not provided a timeline for when its investigation will conclude or when findings might be made public.

What This Means for Travellers

For passengers, the practical disruption from Saturday's incident has, to this point, been limited. There were no system-wide cancellations associated with the close call, and Delta Flight 2351 completed its journey safely after the go-around, with passengers deplaning normally. Logan continued normal operations throughout and after the incident.

That said, Logan functions as one of the principal transatlantic gateways into the United States, serving as a major arrival and departure point for travellers connecting to and from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, and other international destinations, in addition to its role as a high-volume domestic hub. Travellers passing through Logan in the period following an incident of this kind should, as a general matter of course, expect the possibility of incremental scheduling adjustments or minor delays as controllers and airline operations teams remain under heightened attention during the period an FAA investigation is active — though no specific operational changes had been announced as a direct consequence of Saturday's close call at the time of writing.

Sources

1. CNN — "FAA investigates close call between two aircraft at intersecting runways at Boston Logan International Airport" (June 20, 2026) — cnn.com
2. Yahoo News / CNN — "FAA investigates close call between two aircraft at intersecting runways at Boston Logan International Airport" (June 20, 2026) — yahoo.com
3. KTEN / CNN — "FAA investigates close call between two aircraft at intersecting runways at Boston Logan International Airport" (June 20, 2026) — kten.com
4. Prism News — "FAA investigates near-collision at Boston Logan between Delta and American flights" (June 2026) — prismnews.com
5. National Today / Boston Today — "Two planes nearly collide on Logan Airport runway" (March 2, 2026) — nationaltoday.com

This is a developing story. The FAA had not released findings or a timeline for its investigation at the time of writing.