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A plane carrying 10 people is still missing in rural Alaska after the aircraft disappeared during a brutal winter storm on Thursday.
Rescue crews are in a race against time to find survivors aboard the Bering Air Flight 445 and are working in “zero visibility conditions.”
The small aircraft, operated by Bering Air, was reported missing just before 4 p.m. local time en route from Unalakleet to Nome on Alaska’s west coast.
Search and rescue crews have been working through the night to locate the passengers and the pilot but are battling snow, bitter winds and fog.
The disappearance of the plane comes as air safety investigators continue to probe two deadly crashes in the last 10 days. A mid-air collision between an American Airlines jet and a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C., took the lives of 67 people last Wednesday, and two days later, a medical jet crashed in Northeast Philadelphia, killing seven people, including all six passengers on board.
Here is what we know about the missing Alaska plane so far
What happened?
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Nine passengers and a pilot were on board the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan aircraft on Bering Air Flight 445.
The plane took off from the small city of Unalakleet, which has a community of just over 700, on the west coast of Alaska at 2:37 p.m. local time Thursday. Officials lost contact with the aircraft less than an hour later, according to the director of operations for Bering Air, David Olson, and went off radio roughly 10 minutes before its scheduled arrival in the small coastal city of Nome.
The flight time is usually 55 minutes. It was approximately 12 miles offshore flying over the Norton Sound when it disappeared, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
According to officials, the plane pilot told air traffic control in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, that he had intended to enter a holding pattern while waiting for the runway in Nome to be cleared before the aircraft disappeared.
At a press briefing on Friday, authorities said that “some kind of event” caused the aircraft to “rapidly lose altitude and speed,” but could not yet specify what exactly had occurred.
Search and rescue operation in difficult conditions
Crews are now in a race against time to find the passengers and have been scouring the ground in Nome and the White Mountains. White Mountain Fire Chief Jack Adams said crews were prepared to be out all night.
“They will search here until they find them or somebody else finds them,” Adams told Alaska’s KTUU on Thursday. “If they don’t find anything, we’ll probably rally another crew to go and help.”
Adams said that crews are “hoping” that the plane is on land and described the sea as “jumbled” because of the ice. “Being in the water would be the worst-case scenario,” he said.
The latest update from the Nome Volunteer Fire Department at 12.30 a.m. local time was that crews were still searching. An update is due at 9 a.m. local time, the department said.
Volunteers with the department were out on snow machines on Thursday night but faced difficult conditions because of the weather, creating low visibility. Light snow and freezing drizzle were seen around Nome Airport on Thursday evening, with visibility down to only half a mile at its worst.
In an update on Friday, a USCG representative said operations were still in the “search and rescue” stages, rather than a “recovery” mission. “Speaking entirely from the Coast Guard’s perspective, this is an active search and rescue case, so we are operating under the assumption right now that there are still people who are in a position to be assisted by the United States Coast Guard,” they said.
“We continue to have air assets overhead and are in close coordination with the with the local authorities, including the Alaska State Troopers, to provide potentially on-the-ice assistance to any persons who might be found.
“But at this time we are still considering that this is an active search and rescue case, and we have no immediate intentions to change the status of the case in the near term.”
The Coast Guard and U.S. Air Force stepped in with the search mission as reinforcements and have reportedly identified an “item of interest” which may be connected with the missing flight. State troopers were investigating the potential lead on Friday.
Who was aboard the flight?
The names of those aboard the flight have not been released.
It is a small aircraft carrying 10 people, including the pilot. Flights from Unalakleet to Nome depart daily Monday to Saturday, according to Bering’s flight schedule.
All those on board were adults, officials confirmed on Friday, adding that the trip was a “regularly scheduled commuter flight.”
Alaska Senators Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski said their “prayers” were with the passengers, families, crew, and community of Nome in social media posts.
