SkyWest Flight 3788, operating as a Delta Connection flight from Minneapolis, was preparing to descend into the airport in Minot, N.D., on Friday evening when the flight crew spotted a chilling sight: A large military aircraft — a B-52 Stratofortress — was flying toward them on a converging route.
"You probably saw the airplane kind of sort of coming at us," the pilot later told the passengers. "Nobody told us about it."
The pilot, who hasn't been officially identified, put the Embraer jet through what he called an "aggressive maneuver" to avoid either of two calamities: a collision with the eight-engine bomber or flying too close to its turbulent wake. He apologized to the passengers on board — who erupted into spontaneous applause after the harrowing close encounter.
The Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration and the airline tell NPR that they are investigating the incident.
The aviator's explanation was captured on video and shared by passenger Monica Green on Instagram. In the footage, the pilot says of the military aircraft, "I don't know how fast they were going, but they were a lot faster than us."
The Air Force says it's looking into what happened in the airspace near Minot International Airport on Friday. An Air Force spokesperson told NPR, "We can confirm that a B-52 aircraft assigned to Minot [Air Force Base] conducted a flyover of the North Dakota State Fair Friday evening."
North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong, who was among those at the fair, posted an image of the bomber passing over the event.
SkyWest Airlines told NPR in a statement that Flight 3788, a near-daily evening flight from Minneapolis, "landed safely in Minot after being cleared for approach by the tower," adding that it "performed a go-around when another aircraft became visible in their flight path."
The encounter took place as the SkyWest jet descended toward the airport from its cruising altitude of 34,000 feet. It was on a direct path to one of the airport's runways and had passed under 4,000 feet when it sharply increased its rate of descent and abruptly banked to the right, according to the flight-tracking websites Flightradar24.com and FlightAware.com. The commercial jet then quickly climbed and accelerated, gaining nearly 2,000 feet of altitude as it circled around for another approach.
On that same Friday evening, nearby Minot Air Force Base, home of the 5th Bomb Wing, had been planning for a B-52 to perform an "incredibly low" flyover of the North Dakota State Fair at around 1,000 feet, according to The Minot Daily News local newspaper. The bomber's flyover was timed to coincide with an evening concert by country star Bailey Zimmerman.
North Dakota's state fairground sits just across the railroad tracks southeast of Minot's airport — the same direction from which the commercial jet was coming.
As the pilot explained the cause of the unsettling maneuver to passengers, he said that the Minot airport's air traffic control facility does not have radar and operates visually. But, he added, the Air Force does have radar.
"It caught me by surprise. This is not normal at all," the pilot said in the recording. "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.'"
"Long story short, it was not fun, but I do apologize for it."
The Minot airport is one of hundreds in the U.S. whose air traffic control towers are staffed by contract controllers — employees of private companies rather than federal employees. The Federal Aviation Administration says contract controllers must meet the same qualifications and training requirements as the agency's own controllers.
The incident comes six months after 67 people died in a low-altitude collision between a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet that was approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
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