What the Hell Is Going on at Our Airports?

Matt Vespa | March 01, 2023 3:05 PM

Is Pete going to fix this? Because ever since he took over the Department of Transportation, it seems as if every method of travel is crashing or derailing. It goes beyond the catastrophic crash in East Palestine, Ohio, that’s rapidly becoming an environmental crisis. Buttigieg finally arrived two weeks later, but it was clear, given the town's political leanings, that the Biden folks had no intention of assisting in any meaningful way. Before this Ohio catastrophe, air travel collapsed over the holidays over a software glitch that Mayor Pete was abreast of but did nothing.

Now, I’m not that insane to blame Buttigieg for everything, but the default maneuver for this administration is to put everything in cruise control, which has led to disastrous consequences that started when Kabul fell, and we had to flee in humiliating fashion. Since then, many domestic crises have been rolling by with tumbleweed-like frequency. One flying under the radar revolves around our airports. There could have been a Tenerife-like situation at JFK airport, and there was just another close call at Logan in Boston (via Associated Press):

A JetBlue pilot had to take “evasive action” while landing at Boston’s Logan International Airport when another aircraft crossed an intersecting runway, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The close call occurred at about 7 p.m. Monday when the pilot of a Learjet 60 took off without clearance as a JetBlue flight was preparing to land on an intersecting runway, according to the FAA’s preliminary review.
The FAA is investigating just how close the two aircraft came, but flight data tracking service Flightradar24 said Tuesday that a preliminary analysis put the aircraft approximately 530 feet (160 meters) apart.
An air traffic controller instructed the pilot of the Learjet to line up and wait on one runway while the JetBlue flight landed on another, the FAA said in a statement.
“The Learjet pilot read back the instructions clearly but began a takeoff roll instead,” the FAA said. “The pilot of the JetBlue aircraft took evasive action and initiated a climb-out as the Learjet crossed the intersection.”