Shortly thereafter an airliner made an aggressive maneuver Avoid colliding with b-52 Last month over the North Dakota, the bomber collided with almost a small private aircraft as it flew from Minot Airport according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
Investigators released them preliminary report On Wednesday, on the 19 July incident, the bomber completed a flyover at North Dakota State Fair in Minot. Calls close to Delta Flight 3788 are well known due to a video because a passenger shot of the pilot’s announcement after a sudden turn to avoid bombers. But the fact is that B -52 later came within a third of a mile of a small piper airplane, not reported earlier.
Skywest Pilot told his passengers that day that he was surprised to see the bombers shrinking to the right, and the US Air Force also said that air traffic controllers never warned the B -52 crew of a nearby airliner. Officials had said at the time that the flyover was approved with FAA and private controllers who oversee Minot Airport ahead of time.
These close calls were only the latest incidents to raise questions about aviation security in view of January. Washington, DC’s Mid of collisionIn which 67 people were killed.
The NTSB report does not identify the cause of the events, but the transcript of interaction between the three aircraft, the air traffic controller on duty in the minot and a regional FAA controller at a radar center in South Dakota, a regional FAA controller, several misleading commands were issued by the tower that day. Investigators will not release their final report for some time next year.
With the B -52 and delta aircraft being converted from different directions at the airport, the controller told the Delta Plane that he was taking 80 people to fly to the right until the pilot told the controller that he did not want to do so because he was away from his right, so he broke his vision.
“Sorry about aggressive maneuver. This surprised me,” the pilot can be heard saying on the video of a passenger posted on social media. “This is not normal at all. I don’t know why they did not give us heads.”
A passenger who was riding in a skywest flight Said that it felt like Going around a “fast twist on a roller coaster”.
Monica Green said, “Its force kept me focused on my seat, but I could see out of the window and could see the horizon directly on the grass instead of looking.”
“Just with blue, just like a sudden U-turn,” he said.
At one point, the controller intended to instruct the delta aircraft, but accidentally called the bomber call sign out and the order had to be canceled.
Less than a minute after the B -52 crossing the airliner passage, it hit almost small aircraft, while circling, while the bomber flew the airport back to the Minot Air Force Base to return to the base base, where 26 bombers are based.
Aviation Safety Consultant Jeff Guzetty, who used to examine plane crash for both NTSB and FAA, said the controller did not give command to the command for delta and piper aircraft to circle the command soon, so that they could make a safe distance from the bomber.
The transcript shows the local controller to obtain permission every time to call the regional FAA controller, before he issues a command to the aircraft. Guzetty said that it is not clear that taking additional steps to consult with another controller delayed the command or whether the Minot Controller did not guess how close the aircraft would come.
“It all came together at the same time very quickly, and this controller was not at the top of it,” said Guzetty.
Minot Airport usually handles between 18 and 24 flights a day. But at this time, three aircraft were all arriving at the same time.
After close calls, all aircraft landed safely.
These North Dakota Calls put spotlight on small airports such as Call Minot, run without their own radar systems, but it is not clear that the contract tower program that contains 265 airport towers was nothing with the nationwide incident. At the time of the incident, Minot was a controller to staff the tower, and was directly helping aircraft in a controller area in a regional radar center in Rapid City.
