Official in the United States said on Friday (February 7) that a small commuter plane that went missing in Alaska the day before has been found. The plane crashed on the sea ice in western Alaska while en route to the Nome central community, and all ten people on board have died.
A spokesperson for the US Coast Guard, Mike Salerno, said that when the wreckage of the plane was found, rescue personnel flew by helicopter to search for the missing aircraft. Two rescuers were lowered to investigate.
According to the Alaska Department of Public Safety, the single-engine turboprop plane operated by Bering Air took off from Unalakleet on Thursday afternoon, carrying nine passengers and one pilot.
David Olson, the director of operations at Bering Air, stated that the plane left Unalakleet at 2:37 p.m. on Thursday and officials lost contact with the aircraft less than an hour later. The National Weather Service reported light snow and fog with a temperature of 17 degrees Fahrenheit (-8.3 degrees Celsius) at the time.
The Coast Guard stated that the plane went missing approximately 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Nome, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) from the coast.
According to Bering Air, the plane was operating at maximum capacity at the time.
Lieutenant Benjamin McIntyre-Coble of the Coast Guard said, “Radar data provided by the U.S. Civil Air Patrol shows that around 3:18 p.m. on Thursday, the aircraft experienced some sort of ‘event’ that led to a sharp decrease in altitude and speed, but ‘what the event specifically was, I can’t speculate’.”
McIntyre-Coble also mentioned that no distress signals were detected from the aircraft. The plane was equipped with an emergency locator transmitter that sends signals to satellites in contact with seawater, alerting the Coast Guard if the aircraft may be in distress. However, no such signal was received by the Coast Guard.
An official in Alaska stated that all ten individuals on board the plane were adults, and it was a routine commuter trip.
(This article references reports from the Associated Press.)