The search in northwest Alaska intensified Friday for a plane that disappeared with 10 people on board, officials there say.
Bering Air Flight 445 — a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan — was carrying nine passengers and a pilot from Unalakleet to Nome when it went missing on Thursday afternoon, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The identities of those on board have not been released.
The Alaska Department of Public Safety said in a statement that state troopers were contacted by the U.S. Coast Guard about “an overdue aircraft” at 4 p.m. local time, and that search and rescue crews were working to determine the plane’s last known coordinates.
In a post on X, the Coast Guard said the plane was about 12 miles offshore when its position was lost. Unalakleet and Nome are about 150 miles apart, separated by the Norton Sound.
What we know about the search so far
The Nome Volunteer Fire Department said in a Facebook post Friday that search and rescue teams as well as the Coast Guard, National Guard and U.S. Air Force were expanding their search for the missing aircraft.
The fire department said it was conducting a ground search inland and along the coast, while the National Guard and Coast Guard were conducting grid searches by air.
CNN reported that the FBI was also “assisting the search with technical resources, including working to geolocate cell phones of the plane’s passengers.”
According to the fire department, all families of passengers on the missing flight have been notified.
Plane disappeared shortly before it was due to land
According to the flight-tracking site Flightradar24, the plane’s last position was received at 3:16 p.m. local time, 38 minutes after it left Unalakleet.
David Olson, Bering Air’s director of operations, told the Associated Press that the plane left Unalakleet at 2:37 p.m., and lost radio contact roughly 10 minutes before it was scheduled to arrive in Nome. The fire department said that the pilot of the missing plane had told Anchorage air traffic control that “he intended to enter a holding pattern while waiting for the runway to be cleared.”
According to the National Weather Service, there was light snow, freezing drizzle and mist around Nome Airport on Thursday evening. Danielle Tessen, a spokeswoman for Alaska’s Transportation Department, told the New York Times that the runway at Nome Airport that the plane had been approaching had been open throughout the day, and that de-icing operations took place “when no aircraft were on approach or near the airport.”
Bering Air is an FAA-certified regional air service based in Nome with hubs in Kotzebue and Unalakleet, according to its website. It operates passenger and cargo flights seven days a week out of each hub to 32 communities along the northwest coast of Alaska.
According to the Alaska Transportation Department, more than 80% of communities in the state are inaccessible by car and “depend on air access to provide basic needs.”
Unalakleet has a population of about 800, according to U.S. Census data. Nome, with a population of about 10,000, is best known as the ending point of the 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
U.S. air safety under scrutiny
The search for the missing plane comes amid intense scrutiny of U.S. air safety following two deadly incidents in recent weeks,
On Jan. 29, an American Airlines plane collided with a military helicopter over the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., killing 67 people. It was the deadliest air disaster in the United States since 2001.
Two days later, a medical jet crashed near a mall in Philadelphia, killing seven people.
The causes of the two crashes are under investigation.
This is a developing story. Please refresh this page for updates.
