Boston's Logan International Airport is getting more than a third of a new round of federal money to make airport runways safer for planes.
The Federal Aviation Administration is giving $44.9 million to Logan so it can rehabilitate its longest runway, 15R/33L and improve several taxiways, the agency said Wednesday. It's part of a $121 million outlay from the FAA to prevent runway incursions, in which planes, vehicles or people are in the wrong place, making an accident on a runway likelier.
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"The FAA is serious about ending runway incursions and we are putting substantial resources behind our efforts," the FAA's associate administrator for airports, Shannetta Griffin, said in a statement. "In some cases the best way to address safety risks is modifying or reconfiguring existing airfields - these grants directly address those situations."
Airports in Anchorage, Alaska, and Detroit received the next-most money in Wednesday's announcement.
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Logan had a runway incursion in February, when a charter jet took off without permission, crossing a runway on which a JetBlue flight was landing. The captain of the Hop-A-Jet said he heard air traffic controllers tell him to line up and wait before taking off — and even repeated the order back to the controller — “but in his mind, they were cleared for takeoff,” the NTSB said.
Earlier this month, an American Airlines flight was told to quickly abort a takeoff after an air traffic controller noticed another aircraft, a Spirit Airlines flight, approaching too close. One passenger recalled feeling a "major jolt" and hearing the tires squeal as the emergency brakes were applied.
The Federal Aviation Administration didn't describe that incident as a runway incursion. Officials said the controller canceled the takeoff clearance "out of an abundance of caution" after they saw the Spirit Airlines flight coming too close to the runway hold line.
This week, The New York Times published an analysis of runway incursion data that found they've been happening more often than previously disclosed. It provided a graphic illustrating the near-miss at Logan in February.
After the article was published, the FAA issued a statement noting that U.S. air carriers have had no fatal crashes since 2009 and that there are several layers of safety involved in maintaining that record.
"The FAA maintains extremely conservative standards for keeping aircraft safely separated. Safety experts follow up on all events — even those in which no collision was imminent or even possible — and evaluate them for safety risks," the statement said, noting that 1,500 air traffic controllers have been hired this fiscal year, with more in training nationwide.
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"We welcome scrutiny and look forward to the recommendations from the FAA’s independent Safety Review Team this fall.
Logan airport has already closed the 15R/33L runway for the rehabilitation project, which is expected to take about 100 days. The runway is the preferred line of flight for late nights, given that it takes planes over Boston Harbor — meaning that some nearby neighborhoods will have more planes flying overhead for the duration of the project.
