An incident involving an Air Force B-52 Stratofortress and a regional Delta airline passenger jet in North Dakota has now prompted multiple investigations after the bomber appeared near the plane’s flight path and the commercial pilot was suddenly forced to evade the military aircraft.
SkyWest flight 3788, operating Friday as a Delta connection between Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Minot, North Dakota, “landed safely in Minot after being cleared for approach by the tower but performed a go-around when another aircraft became visible in their flight path,” the regional airline said in an unsigned statement to Military.com on Monday.
The aircraft the passenger jet encountered was allegedly a B-52 bomber. An Air Force spokesperson told Military.com they were aware of the incident and that a “B-52 assigned to Minot AFB conducted a flyover of the North Dakota State Fair Friday evening.”
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The alleged incident was vividly detailed in a TikTok video that was widely circulated over the weekend showing the pilot of the SkyWest flight apologizing to the passengers aboard for the “aggressive maneuver.” The situation comes nearly six months after a passenger plane collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C. — marking one of the deadliest commercial crashes in recent history — and brought significant scrutiny to military aviation mishaps.
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed in a statement to Military.com on Monday that it is also probing the circumstances of the incident.
“The FAA is investigating the event involving SkyWest Airlines Flight 3788 at Minot International Airport on Friday, July 18,” the FAA said. “Air traffic services were provided by the Minot air traffic control tower, which is run by a private company. These controllers are not FAA employees.”
The Air Force said it is “looking into the matter,” and SkyWest added it is “investigating the event.”
Minot Air Force Base is home to the 5th Bomb Wing, which includes B-52s, and the 91st Missile Wing, which is one of three nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile units in the U.S.
In the TikTok video of the alleged incident, the pilot described the incident to passengers and said “nobody told us” about the other aircraft.
“So, sorry about the aggressive maneuver; it caught me by surprise. This is not normal at all,” the pilot said in the video. “I don’t know why they didn’t give us a heads up, because the Air Force base does have radar and nobody said, ‘Hey, there’s also a B-52 in the pattern.'”
Publicly available flight tracking radar showed the regional jet making a loop while approaching Minot.
SkyWest did not immediately return a request for comment about the authenticity and accuracy of the video. Passenger Monica Green told CNN the flight was getting ready to land when she felt the plane suddenly move “like we did a U-turn.”
“I’m just happy with transparency from the pilot. It made me feel better that the pilot said something about it and made the consumers aware,” Green told CNN.
John Nance, an aviation expert and former pilot who was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve, told Military.com that “there’s a lot to be sorted out here” when it comes to the incident, particularly as it relates to miscommunication.
“If the tower did not know of the presence of the B-52 doing a fly-by, then we have a bit of a, no pun intended, Tower of Babel because the towers should have been informed about this,” Nance said. “They should have been in contact with any other traffic, which specifically was the [regional jet], warning them about the B-52. And the B-52, for that matter, should have been in contact.”
Aircraft mishaps, including those involving military aircraft, are under heavy scrutiny and attention following the Jan. 29 crash between American Eagle Flight 5342, which was landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and a Black Hawk helicopter out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
The collision led to the death of the three-person Black Hawk crew and all 64 aboard the plane. It was the worst commercial aviation crash in the U.S. in 16 years.
The FAA closed the helicopter route used by Army helicopters for training following the crash. Investigations are ongoing into the collision, and family members and lawmakers are also raising questions regarding the helicopter’s Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B, and whether it potentially played a role.
Nance said that, in addition to increased public awareness, there’s also greater public education on aviation as a whole.
“We do have a heightened public awareness both on that specific case and the broader case of air traffic and of the problem of air traffic control, in terms of number of controllers and any close calls that occur from that,” Nance told Military.com. “At the same time, we have a rising level of sophistication of the general public about these things, which tends to suppress the hysteric side.”
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