Departing Jet Forced to Hurdle Small Plane Blocking Runway

The pilot of a jet carrying 136 people had to climb so steeply during takeoff to avoid a small plane on the same runway that the jet scraped its tail on the pavement, officials said Monday.

The Pan Am Boeing 727 passed just 20 to 50 feet above a Precision Airlines twin-engine propeller aircraft bound for Islip, N.Y., with five people on board, authorities said.

The Pan Am jet, en route to La Guardia Airport in New York City about 8 p.m. Sunday, returned to Logan International Airport for examination and its passengers were transferred to a later flight. No one was injured.

The Pan Am jet had been cleared for takeoff when a small plane was allowed to taxi from an intersection about halfway down the same runway, said Michael Ciccarelli, regional spokesman for the FAA.

Susan Timper, a spokeswoman for Pan Am, said minor damage to the plane’s tail was repaired Monday and that engineers would review voice and data recordings to complete their evaluation of the plane.

“The airplane will stay on the ground at Logan and be checked out. The National Transportation Safety Board is actually overseeing this inspection,” she said.

The controller who approved the movements of both planes was about three quarters through an 8-hour shift at the time of the incident, Ciccarelli said. The controller was immediately relieved of his duties pending an NTSB investigation.

Ciccarelli said 55 near mid-air collisions were reported in New England in 1987, compared to 32 so far this year.