Ed Peterson

Minot

For several months military helicopters have been flying and hovering over our neighborhood many times a day multiple days a week. These helicopters are loud and are the only air traffic that I notice on any regular basis.

They rattle the windows and drown out the TV or conversation. I have lived on North Hill for over 40 years so I am accustomed to the normal airport noises. In recent months this traffic has been increasing. Just this week they were at it for 5 hours on a single day. Today in the space of 3 hours they have made 20 passes or more. I contacted MAFB and was told that they were doing “transition/emergencies.”

These look like touch and go (landings) to me. The officer told me that they come to the airport to do these when there is too much fixed wing traffic at MAFB or the wind is from the wrong direction. I was told that “everything was legal.”

The implication was that this practice would continue and there was nothing that I or the residents could do about it. Because of the noise that continues for hours and the number of military helicopters that crash during practice it is not a good idea to turn Minot’s airport and the surrounding community into an air base for military helicopter practice. (As I write this the military helicopter traffic continues into the 4th hour today.)