A Delta Air Lines flight to Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) appears to have become the latest in an unusual string of go-arounds and close calls involving Delta aircraft at the airport. A passenger reported that pilots aborted the landing on Thursday due to there being “multiple aircraft” potentially impeding on the runway.

This latest account comes in a week when Delta has experienced three other high-profile aborted landings at the same airport, including one event that drew national attention and is now under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). It also coincides with testimony made to Congress earlier this week that there are “thousands” more near misses in the US than are ever widely reported.

A Fourth Delta Flight Raises Fresh Questions

Credit: Delta Air Lines

The most recent incident involved Delta Air Lines Flight DL2558 from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) to Boston Logan on Thursday, June 25. Flight tracking data shows the aircraft making a normal approach into Runway 4R, before executing a rapid go-around below 400 feet just before it passed the runway threshold. The flight circled out west of the airfield, and subsequently landed without incident about ten minutes later on the parallel Runway 4L.

The account of the incident first came from writer James Lileks, who posted on X that he had been onboard DL2558, and that the pilot aborted the landing because of what he described as an “occupational aversion to fatal collisions.” The incident was subsequently confirmed by multiple other passengers aboard the flight, at least one of whom was already nervous because of prior incidents at BOS earlier in the week. Lileks added:

“On the way out, I said to pilot I’d seen the other plane nearby and worried; he said, grimly, ‘There was more than one.'”

This would appear to confirm that a fourth Delta aircraft arriving at Boston had to abort its landing due to the presence of other aircraft, and in this specific case, it was multiple aircraft. It comes within days of two FAA-investigated go-arounds at the same airport. For aviation safety officials, the critical question is whether this was simply a coincidental cluster of unrelated events, or a sign of wider pressure on runway and tower operations at one of the Northeast’s busiest airports.

Three Delta Flights Aborted Landings Over The Weekend

Credit: Delta Air Lines

There were three Delta go-arounds at Boston over the weekend, and the one that made national headlines came first. On Saturday, June 20, Delta Air Lines Flight DL2351, an Airbus A319, was arriving from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) when its crew aborted landing as an American AirlinesBoeing 737-800 was departing from an intersecting runway. The NTSB has opened an investigation due to the proximity of the two aircraft and severity of the incident.

The numbers involved made the incident stand out. Flight-tracking analysis cited by Reuters placed the aircraft about 300 feet apart at the runway intersection based on barometric pressure readings, while other local reports described the separation as roughly the length of a football field. A Delta spokesperson later said that the crew “followed established procedures in coordination with air traffic control” and landed safely, while the American flight, bound for Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), also departed safely. No injuries were reported, but the visual and operational proximity of two airline aircraft on intersecting runway paths made this more than a routine missed approach.

Then came a second FAA-investigated incident on Sunday, June 21. Delta Flight DL1075, an Airbus A319 arriving from Raleigh–Durham International Airport (RDU), was instructed by Logan air traffic control to go around at around 5:45 p.m. because another aircraft was clearing the Delta aircraft’s runway after crossing it. Delta confirmed that the flight was told to go around, and said the crew followed established procedures and landed safely.

A third Sunday go-around involved DL5644, a Delta Connection Embraer 175 from Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), although there are conflicting reports as to the nature of the aborted landing, and whether it was another near miss or a more “routine” go-around due to an unstable approach.

Near Misses Are Back In The National Spotlight

Credit: Delta Air Lines

The Boston sequence is attracting attention because it comes during a week when near misses were already making headlines in Congress. On Tuesday, June 23, the Senate Commerce Committee’s aviation subcommittee held a hearing titled “Close Calls: Improving Safety Across the National Airspace System.” Former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, now President and CEO of Airlines for America, told lawmakers that many more near misses occur than the public ever hears about, saying there are “hundreds” of them every single day.

That does not mean every go-around is a crisis. In fact, the Boston examples show why aviation’s layered safety system exists. Pilots, controllers, onboard traffic systems, runway surveillance tools, and standard procedures are all intended to catch problems before they become accidents. In the Saturday Boston incident, the Delta crew’s decision to go around appears to have prevented a far more serious outcome, with the senators in the hearing commending them for saving lives. In the Sunday DL1075 incident, ATC issued the go-around before the landing continued. In both cases, the aircraft landed safely.

But the margin between a close call and a runway catastrophe has already been demonstrated this year. On March 22, an Air Canada CRJ-900 collided with an airport firefighting vehicle while landing on Runway 4 at New York’s LaGuardia Airport(LGA). The NTSB’s preliminary findings showed that the runway safety system did not activate before the collision, the truck lacked a transponder broadcasting its position, and the aircraft had just landed at about 104 mph when the crash occurred.

The FAA says it has been taking steps to reduce serious close calls, including deploying surface-safety tools, improving runway-safety training, addressing controller fatigue, and hiring more air traffic controllers. In May, the agency also released a new controller workforce plan, with hiring targets of 2,200 new controllers in fiscal 2026, 2,300 in fiscal 2027, and 2,400 in fiscal 2028. The plan also calls for modern staffing models, automated scheduling tools, and technology upgrades to reduce overtime and improve controller performance.

The question now is whether those fixes can arrive quickly enough. Boston’s string of Delta go-arounds may seem like a coincidence, but after LaGuardia, lawmakers, airlines, unions, and regulators are increasingly saying the same thing: the system remains safe, but the warning signs are becoming harder to dismiss. The task is to act on those warnings before the next runway conflict is remembered not as a close call, but as a disaster.