A Learjet pilot thought he was cleared to take off. He wasn’t. Luckily, JetBlue pilots saw him

Federal investigators said Thursday that the pilot of a charter jet took off without permission, creating a “conflict” with a JetBlue plane that was preparing to land on an intersecting runway at Boston’s Logan International Airport in February.

A screen grab from video shot from the JetBlue cockpit captures the moment the Learjet operated by charter service Hop-A-Jet crossed the runway just in front of the JetBlue plane.

The JetBlue Embraer jet came within 30 feet (9 meters) of the ground, but the pilots were able to pull up and circle around for another landing attempt, according to a report from the National Transportation Safety Board.

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.

Once the Hop-A-Jet plane landed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the 63-year-old captain and 23-year-old co-pilot were told by the Boston tower that they had taken off without authorization and that the JetBlue plane passed about 400 feet (120 meters) above them as it performed a go-around, the NTSB said in its final report.

The incident was one of several early this year that raised alarms about aviation safety in the United States despite the lack of a fatal crash involving a U.S. airline since 2009. The close calls led the Federal Aviation Administration to convene a “safety summit” in March to brainstorm ways to prevent planes from coming too close together.