Wreckage of plane missing in Alaska found on sea ice; all aboard dead

 The wreckage of a plane matching the description of one that went missing Thursday afternoon was found on sea ice in Alaska on Friday, Feb. 7, the U.S. Coast Guard said. 

All 10 aboard – nine passengers and the pilot flying the single-engine turboprop plane – did not survive the apparent crash, the Coast Guard told the Anchorage Daily News. 

“Our thoughts are with those affected by this tragic incident,” the Coast Guard said in a statement.

Initially, a Coast Guard spokesperson told the Associated Press that crews had not been able to fully open what they believe to be Bering Air Flight 445, which had been traveling from Unalakleet to Nome. 

“Right now we just know that there’s three,” Cameron Snell told the Associated Press about the people believed to be inside the single-engine turboprop plane. 

Unalakleet and Nome are about 150 miles apart, separated by the Norton Sound, south of the Arctic Circle. 

In a Thursday post on social media, the Coast Guard said the plane had been about 12 miles offshore when its position was lost. 

The Nome Volunteer Fire Department said in a Facebook post early Friday, Feb. 7, that search and rescue teams as well as the Coast Guard, National Guard and U.S. Air Force had expanded 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 of ice-covered seas by air. 

The FBI agents were also assisting in the search, using cellphone tracking data of the passengers to help locate the plane. 

At a press briefing Friday afternoon, Benjamin McIntyre-Coble, assistant incident management chief with the U.S. Coast Guard District 17, said that "an item of interest" had been located, and that search crews were headed to the location of the item. He would not speculate about what might have been found. 

 

David Olson, Bering Air's director of operations, told the Associated Press that the plane left Unalakleet at 2:37 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 6, and lost radio contact about 38 minutes later. 

According to the flight-tracking site Flightradar24, the plane’s last position was received at 3:16 p.m. local time, roughly 10 minutes before it was scheduled to arrive in Nome. 

 

McIntyre-Coble said radar forensic data showed that at approximately 3:18 p.m., the plane "experienced some kind of event that caused a rapid loss of elevation and rapid loss of speed." 

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.” 

 

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 Thursday, and that search and rescue crews were working to determine the plane’s last known coordinates. 

The identities of those on board have not been released, but all of their families have been notified, the Coast Guard said Friday.