Shortly after completing a flyover at the North Dakota State Fair in Minot last July, a B-52 bomber was involved in two separate close calls that highlighted serious aviation safety concerns. First, a Delta flight was forced to make a sudden and aggressive turn to avoid colliding with the massive bomber. The tense moment became widely known when a passenger recorded the pilot’s announcement explaining the abrupt maneuver.
What wasn’t initially reported, however, was that moments later, the B-52 came within one-third of a mile (about half a kilometer) of a small private Piper aircraft as it approached Minot’s airport. According to investigators, air traffic controllers never warned the bomber’s crew about the presence of either the Delta flight or the Piper plane.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released its preliminary report on August 27, noting that these dangerous encounters are part of a growing pattern of “near misses” across the country. For many experts, the events in Minot underscore just how thin the margin of safety can become in today’s crowded airspace, reinforcing broader concerns about why flying may be becoming more dangerous.
Click through this gallery to see how incidents like the Minot near-misses, combined with changing weather and other human and technical factors, are making flying riskier than before.