Pilot swerves to avoid B-52 bomber over North Dakota, then grabs mic to explain manoeuvre

The pilot of a regional airliner flying over North Dakota carried out an unexpected sharp turn and later apologised to passengers, explaining that he made the move after spotting a military plane in his flight path.The Friday incident is detailed in a video taken by a passenger and posted to social media as Delta Flight 3788 approached the Minot International Airport for landing. In the video, the SkyWest pilot can be heard over the plane’s intercom system explaining that he made the sharp turn after spotting a B-52 bomber in his flight path.
“Sorry about the aggressive manoeuvre. It caught me by surprise,” the pilot can be heard saying on the video. “This is not normal at all. I don’t know why they didn’t give us a heads up.” SkyWest, a regional carrier for Delta and other large airlines, said the flight had departed from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and landed safely in Minot after performing a “go-around” manoeuvre when another aircraft became visible in the SkyWest plane’s flight path.
Minot is 160 kilometres north of Bismarck, North Dakota’s capital city, and about 80 kilometres from the Canadian border.The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that it’s investigating the incident. SkyWest said it is also investigating.

In the video, the pilot noted that Minot’s small airport does not operate radar and directs flights visually. When the airport tower instructed the SkyWest flight to make a right turn upon approach, the pilot said he looked in that direction and saw the bomber in his flight path. He informed the tower and made a hard turn to avoid the bomber, he said.

“I don’t know how fast they were going, but they were a lot faster than us,” the pilot said of the bomber.The North Dakota incident comes nearly six months after a midair collision between an Army helicopter and a jetliner over Washington, DC, that killed all 67 people aboard the two aircraft.

Minot Air Force Base is about 16 kilometres north of Minot, North Dakota’s fourth-largest city. The base is home to 26 B-52 bombers, intercontinental ballistic missile operations and more than 5,400 military personnel.

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An Air Force spokesperson confirmed Monday that a B-52 bomber assigned to the base conducted a flyover of the North Dakota State Fair on Friday and that the Air Force is “looking into” the report of a bomber and a commercial airliner operating in the same airspace around the Minot airport.

The pilot’s frustration is evident in the video.

“The Air Force base does have radar, and nobody said, Hey, there’s a B-52 in the pattern,’” the pilot told passengers.