‘He deserves a medal’: Shaken pilot tells anxious passengers how close they just came to certain death

2025 has not been a great year for aviation. In January, we had the collision over the Potomac and a medical transport jet crashing into a residential neighborhood, April saw a smattering of smaller plane and helicopter crashes, and then the Air India disaster in June.

Now, were it not for the quick-thinking and skills of one Delta pilot, we’d have another colossal disaster to add to this miserable list. The incident took place above North Dakota on July 8, involving a flight out of Minneapolis to Minot. As the Delta flight was beginning its final approach, the passengers on board were shocked as the pilot suddenly launched into an “aggressive maneuver”.

Moments later, the clearly very shaken pilot spoke to the passengers to explain what had just happened:

#BREAKING: Delta pilot makes sudden "aggressive maneuver" to dodge a speeding B-52 bomber over Minot, North Dakota.

🎧 Caught on audio:

“This is not normal at all… Not a fun day at work.”#Delta #B52 #AviationIncident pic.twitter.com/nFFy8zcDAM

— UP BK NEWS📰 (@UP_BKSH) July 21, 2025

As it transpired, the flight had been on a direct collision course with a B-52 bomber, forcing him to loop behind the oncoming plane. The pilot goes on to apologize to the passengers:

“So sorry about the aggressive maneuver. It caught me by surprise. This is 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 was not fun but I do apologize for it and thank you for understanding. It was not a fun day at work. So have a nice evening and I’m glad you’re safe.”

No need to apologize for literally saving everyone’s lives

Buddy, the last thing you need to be doing right now is apologizing. Your quick thinking just saved the lives of everybody aboard both planes and anyone unlucky enough to be below them on the ground. Reddit’s r/aviation, where pilots and experts were horrified that such a near miss could ever happen, summed it up:

“If this captain managed to dodge an unknown large military aircraft in the same landing pattern, by diving that hard that close to the Earth, and everyone walked away… he deserves a medal.”

Minot Air Force Base now has some serious questions to answer about how this could have happened. Investigations are underway on both sides as to how this near-miss ever came to pass, though it’s shocking that the Delta crew received absolutely no advance warning that the B-52 was heading right at them, with the only thing that averted disaster being expert piloting and quick thinking.

In the meantime, I think that pilot deserves not only a medal but should never have to buy a drink for himself at the pilot’s bar ever again.