A regional jet flying on behalf of Delta Air Lines had to make a last minute maneuver to avoid a B-52 bomber, and the level of detail in which the pilot communicated this to passengers is quite something (thanks to PYOK for flagging this)…
Delta plane has close call with military jet in North Dakota
This incident happened on Thursday, July 18, 2025 (I know the video says July 19, but that’s not accurate, as the flight didn’t operate that day), and it involves Delta flight DL3788, operating from Minneapolis, Minnesota (MSP), to Minot, North Dakota (MOT). The 449-mile flight was flown by an Embraer E175 operating under the Delta Connection brand, which is Delta’s regional subsidiary.
The roughly 90-minute flight was mostly routine, and if you look at flight tracking software, you’ll simply see that the plane had a missed approach at Minot, circled back around, and came in for a successful landing. That’s hardly out of the ordinary, at least on the surface.
However, the actual details of the incident are a bit more dramatic. A TikTok user posted a video online with the audio of the pilot explaining to passengers what happened, and it has now been viewed millions of times. The pilot’s explanation is quite something. Note that the audio only starts part way into the explanation:
“For those of you on the right hand side, you probably saw the airplane kind of sort of coming at us. Nobody told us about it, so we continued and there’s no radar here, so the tower does everything visually. So they sent us about six miles from the airport, so we did that, I think he realized that the spacing wasn’t going to work, and I looked over and there was an airplane that was supposed to be on the right hand side.”
“I thought it was a small airplane, like the ones you see at the airport right now doing touch and goes. And he said turn right, and I said there’s an airplane over there, and he says turn left, and by the time we read back the clearance, we looked over and saw the airplane that was kind of coming on a convergent course with us.”
“So given his speed, it was a military aircraft, it was the safest thing to do to turn behind it. So sorry for the aggressive maneuver, it caught me by surprise, and it’s not normal at all. I don’t know why they didn’t give us a heads up. Because the airport base does have radar, and nobody said ‘hey, there’s also a B-52 in the pattern.’ Long story short, it wasn’t fun, and I do apologize for it, and I thank you for your understanding. Not a fun day at work.”
You can listen to the audio for yourself below.
It’s hard to know exactly how close of a call it was between the Delta regional jet and the B-52. For those curious why there was B-52 near a small regional airport in North Dakota, it’s because Minot Air Force Base is also in this area, and there are dozens of B-52s stationed there.
The pilot went into quite a bit of detail on what happened!
It’s exceedingly rare to see a pilot go into this level of detail with passengers about an incident. I’m conflicted about this.
On the one hand, a major point of frustration that air travelers have is the lack of transparency when things go wrong, ranging from weather delays, to maintenance issues. This guy deserves huge credit for communicating transparently, and it seems that passengers greatly appreciate that — you can hear everyone clapping at the end, and the comments on TikTok are basically universally praising the pilot.
On the other hand, he could’ve just as easily said “sorry about that maneuver, we had to perform a go around due to some traffic, we’ll be landing again soon,” and no one would’ve likely thought more of it. It almost seems like he’s sharing this level of detail over the PA in order to process his own feelings about the incident.
I suspect we’ll soon see this story making national headlines, since the mainstream media loves to pick up on airline stories, and a Delta jet having to perform an “aggressive maneuver” to avoid a B-52 is quite a story, especially given the general concerns about military traffic vs. commercial traffic (like the fatal January 2025 accident, where a Black Hawk helicopter crashed into an American Eagle jet).
And heck, maybe bringing attention to these kinds of incidents is actually ultimately good for the public, since hopefully it increasingly forces military aircraft to not put civilian aircraft in danger.
Bottom line
A Delta regional jet was forced to perform a last minute “aggressive maneuver” to avoid a B-52 bomber, while landing in North Dakota. Purely from looking at flight tracking, you wouldn’t think much of the aborted landing, though the pilot gave quite the detailed account of what happened.
Kudos to the pilot, I don’t think you can be much more transparent about an incident than he was. At the same time, while I’m sure people were grateful for the explanation, I’m not sure it put many people at ease…
What do you make of this incident, and the pilot’s communication?
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