() The pilot of a Delta regional flight heading for Minot, North Dakota, avoided a midair collision with a B-52 bomber Friday by performing an “aggressive maneuver.”
The plane, operated by SkyWest, departed from Minneapolis and did not have the military jet on its radar.
“Nobody told us about it,” the pilot told passengers, recorded on audio by a woman on the plane.
“So sorry about the aggressive maneuver, it caught me by surprise, this is not normal at all,” the pilot can be heard saying. “I don’t know why they didn’t give us a heads-up because the Air Force base does have radar … long story short, it was not fun, but I do apologize for it and thank you for understanding.”
Minot Air Force Base is about 13 miles north of the Minot International Airport. The commercial pilot received a report from the air traffic control tower about an aircraft coming toward them. He was instructed to turn right, but he didn’t.
“He said, ‘Turn right.’ I said, ‘There’s an airplane over there.’ He says, ‘Turn left,’ and by the time we (were) back to clearance, we looked over and saw the airplane that was coming on a converging course with us,” the pilot said.
He turned behind it instead.
“They are a lot faster than us, and I felt that was the safest thing to do, turn behind it,” the pilot said.
Passengers began clapping after the pilot finished his announcement.
Monica Green, who recorded the audio, told a local news outlet that passengers were “weirdly calm,” despite the tense situation.
“I felt like I was gaslighting myself, like maybe I was being crazy because no one else was reacting,” Green told KFYR. “ The pilot got on the intercom and said, ‘Sorry everybody, I’ll explain everything when we land safely.’ The way he said it, it almost sounded like he was insinuating that landing safely might not be an option for a moment. We all just kind of looked at each other and stayed quiet.”
Delta and SkyWest have not responded to ‘s request for comment as of publication.
