BISMARCK, N.D. — Air traffic controllers at a small North Dakota airport didn’t inform an Air Force bomber’s crew that a commercial airliner was flying in the same area, the military said, shedding light on the nation’s latest air safety scare.
A SkyWest pilot performed a sharp turn, startling passengers, to avoid colliding with the B-52 bomber that he said was in his flight path as he prepared to land Friday at Minot International Airport.
The bomber had been conducting a flyover at the North Dakota State Fair in Minot that was approved in consultation with the Federal Aviation Administration, the Minot International Airport air traffic control and the Minot Air Force Base’s air traffic control team, the Air Force said in a statement Monday.
As the bomber headed to the fairgrounds shortly before 8 p.m., the base’s air traffic control advised its crew to contact the Minot airport’s air traffic control.
“The B-52 crew contacted Minot International Airport tower and the tower provided instructions to continue 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) westbound after the flyover,” the Air Force said. “The tower did not advise of the inbound commercial aircraft.”
Video taken by a passenger on Delta Flight 3788, which departed from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and posted to social media captured audio of the SkyWest pilot explaining over the plane’s intercom that he made the hard bank after spotting the bomber in the flight path that Minot air traffic control had directed him to take for landing.
“Sorry about the aggressive maneuver. 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.”
The FAA, Air Force and SkyWest are investigating.
It’s just the latest flight scare in recent months. In February, a Southwest Airlines flight about to land at Chicago’s Midway Airport was forced to climb back into the sky to avoid another aircraft crossing the runway. That followed the tragic midair collision of a passenger jet and an Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., in January that killed all 67 people aboard the two aircraft. Those and other recent incidents have raised questions about the FAA’s oversight.
The FAA said Monday that a private company services the Minot air traffic control tower, and that the controllers there aren’t FAA employees. It is one of 265 airport towers nationwide that are operated by companies, but the roughly 1,400 air traffic controllers at these smaller airports meet the same qualification and training requirements as FAA controllers at larger airports, the agency said.
Some small airports like Minot’s also don’t have their own radar systems on site. In fact, the vast majority of the nation’s airports don’t even have towers, mainly because most small airports don’t have passenger air service. But regional FAA radar facilities do oversee traffic all across the country and help direct planes in and out of airports like Minot. The Minot airport typically handles between 18 and 24 flights a day.
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Beck reported from Omaha, Nebraska. Associated Press writer Josh Funk contributed from Omaha.