Former Massport CEO says close calls at Logan Airport in Boston are "warning signs"

CBS News

30-01-2025

BOSTON - Video taken by a passenger on a flight leaving Reagan National Airport shows two Black Hawk helicopters flying right alongside the commercial plane. Days later, a similar scene would end in tragedy, when an American Airlines plane with 60 passengers and four crew on board collided in midair with an Army Black Hawk helicopter.
"Helicopters always have to yield"
Former NYPD helicopter pilot Vincent Aprea, who now flies a medical transport helicopter, says it's not unusual for military helicopters to be flying near the D.C. area airport. He told telling the I-Team, pilots of both aircraft should be talking to air traffic control.
Aprea says in the sky, "helicopters always have to yield to the right of way of the airplane. Being that it's at Reagan Airport there's a lot of military activity in that area because of the White House and the Pentagon so it is not unusual to have military aircraft going through Reagan airspace."
Air traffic controllers have radar to keep track of flights in the air and help redirect aircraft if they are on a collision course, assuming there is enough time. A second radar, called a traffic avoidance and collision system is in every commercial aircraft in the world. It works by sensing collisions and tells the pilot to climb or descend to avoid a crash but it only works above a 1,000 feet.
"You can't rely solely on air traffic control to keep you safe," Aprea said. "Each pilot of each aircraft has to maintain their own little separate safety bubble around each other to avoid any collisions."
Near midair collisions on the rise
The CBS data team found near midair collisions are on the rise in the U.S. NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System shows there were 5,066 incidents over the last twenty years from 2005 through fall of 2024.
Boston's Logan had its own close call in February of 2023, when the airport's surface detection system alerted after a charter jet took off without permission as a JetBlue plan was landing. Logan has also had other incidents involving planes hitting each other on the tarmac.
Tom Kinton, former Massport CEO tells the I-Team, "those are warning signs that something is wrong, and those have to be taken very seriously."
Massport trains for water accidents, hoping what happened in Washington D.C. will never happen in Boston. "I'll guarantee you Boston's going to look, with the air traffic control, the FAA in Boston and they're going to look at their procedures as a result of this," Kinton said.