The B-52 That Almost Hit A Plane Actually Almost Hit One other Plane Too

A month after a B-52 bomber landing at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota caused a SkyWest airliner to take evasive maneuvers, the National Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary report on the incident. And, hoo boy, it was a bit more of an incident than anybody realized at first. Immediately after the B-52 nearly hit the Embraer E170, it then nearly hit a small Piper PA-28 that was also in the world! Air incidents between two planes are relatively rare, but between three of them is basically something else.

This has all change into one more indicator that air traffic control within the U.S. will not be in good health. Across the country, towers are understaffed by people who find themselves overworked, in a job that has zero margin for error. The January crash of an Army Black Hawk with a regional jet happened while the ATC on duty was double-booked on each helicopter and plane duties, which very likely contributed to the horrific result.

On this instance, nevertheless, the Minot airport tower had a grand total of 1 operator. And it wasn’t even an FAA tower. Because it seems, that is lots more common than you think that.

Airports have air traffic control towers, right? Well, no, actually — only around 10% of American airports have them, per AP. They’ll be at the massive international airports, after all, but the large variety of smaller airfields often might be much less equipped. Lots of them will only have an individual with binoculars and a radio to coordinate traffic, and in case you only got confused, yes that is the yr 2025. That will not be ideal, particularly if there’s any, say, weather.

Still, it’s higher than nothing in any respect, which is where things were heading just a few many years ago. As an alternative choice to attempting to operate every airport itself, starting in 1982 the FAA began a contract program with private firms to administer ATC at smaller airports. This program has been hugely successful, and personal towers were managing 28% of all American air traffic in 2020. In keeping with a USDOT report, these private towers have equivalent safety records as their FAA-run counterparts, despite the fact that they cost $1.5 million less because of less staff and lower salaries.

The Minot airport tower is such a personal enterprise. That is sensible: there’s normally only 18-24 flights per day, so it isn’t exactly heavily trafficked. Well, normally. On this particular day, there have been three planes within the air directly, and that is where things got weird.

Because the NTSB’s prelim report lays out, the Minot airport does have some radar coverage, but only from all the best way in the opposite Dakota. A radar station in Rapid City, South Dakota offers service to the ATC in Minot, and an operator from the previous was in contact with the latter about all three planes. The trick here is that this works for overall management, but as happened here, breaks down when you get into the nitty gritty of specific landing movements.

There isn’t a mirrored feed of the station’s radar for the Minot operator to have a look at (although some small airports literally just have a live feed of a camera pointed at a close-by station’s screen), so it’s just as much as verbal communication over the radio between the 2 towers. This got very complicated in a short time, as all three planes were talking to the ATC in Minot, who was in turn talking to the radar operator in Rapid City. This led to a giant lag between a request and a response. Worse, it also led to a few of commands going out to the incorrect airplane. Oops.

All of it got here together within the worst way, but thankfully, the SkyWest pilot took evasive maneuvers just in time, and the B-52 didn’t strike the Piper, either. Catastrophe just barely averted.

The prelim report stops wanting casting any blame, but clearly this type of thing cannot occur again. Straight away, the Big Beautiful Bill has allocated $12.5 billion to modernizing all the system, but already USDOT is asking for $19 billion more. Even when that in some way happens, does any of that help the privately run towers, just like the one at Minot?