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JetBlue Airways Unknown aircraft incident

27 Apr 2012 · Las Vegas, NV, United States

Incident: near midair/TCAS alert/loss of separation during initial climb

From Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) to Las Vegas, NV

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Event

NTSB case
OPS12IA535
Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
Incident
InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
Completed
API-reported fatalities
0 · all aircraft and ground
Ground fatalities
0
OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
Airline
WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
Visual Meteorological Cond

Unknown aircraft

RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Boston Logan International Airport (BOS), Boston, MATo Las Vegas, NV
Aircraft age
Not recorded
Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
Part 121: Air Carrier
Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
Initial climb
Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
Near midair/TCAS alert/loss of separation
DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
None

Cause areas

  • Organizational issues › Management

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The flight crew of an Airbus A320, operated by an air carrier, was conducting a visual approach to runway 25L while a Learjet 60 (LR60) was simultaneously cleared for takeoff from runway 19L. The pilot of the A320 elected to execute a go-around and came into hazardous proximity with the LR60 as it departed runway 19L. After the pilot of the A320 executed the go-around, neither local controller was able to provide control instructions to separate the two aircraft. The closest proximity of the two aircraft was approximately 0.3 nautical miles laterally and 100 feet vertically.

The two aircraft were being controlled by different tower controllers, who were simultaneously routing aircraft to land on runway 25L and to depart from runway 19L--nonintersecting, converging runways whose flight paths intersect. This procedure was not prohibited by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and there were no FAA-prescribed separation minima or procedures for air traffic controllers to follow when conducting simultaneous independent converging runway operations in the event a pilot elected to execute a go-around. This resulted in the aircraft going around coming into close proximity with the departure aircraft where the flight paths intersected.

Probable cause

Federal Aviation Administration procedures that do not ensure separation in the event of a go-around during simultaneous independent runway operations on runways that do not physically intersect but whose flight paths intersect.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record OPS12IA535
Event ID
20120501X50822
Case number
OPS12IA535
Dataset
full-current
Source SHA-256
5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
  • Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
  • Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
  • The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: 2106d09b6038c0f4f58a20a65bb69cbd2b14ee28dcf5cb272bcebac82937ce04; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:56:21.302Z.
  • The NTSB's operator name is blank for Unknown; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, YENA.