Alaska plane that disappeared with 10 people aboard has been found with no survivors, officials say

A photo shared by the Coast Guard shows the aircraft broken into pieces in a snowy terrain.

(CNN) — The regional airline flight that disappeared in Alaska Thursday has been found and all 10 people who were aboard are dead, the US Coast Guard said Friday.

The small commuter aircraft was found Friday about 34 miles southeast of Nome, according to the USCG.

Two rescue swimmers identified three bodies inside the plane and the seven others “are believed to be inside the wreckage,” but they are inaccessible at this time, USCG Lt. Commander Mike Salerno told CNN.

The Cessna aircraft, operated by Bering Air and carrying nine passengers and a pilot, disappeared Thursday afternoon while heading from Unalakleet to Nome – cities in western Alaska separated by the Norton Sound inlet – according to the Alaska State Troopers. It was about 12 miles offshore when its position was lost, according to the Coast Guard.

The aircraft “experienced some kind of event which caused them to experience a rapid loss in elevation and a rapid loss in speed” around 3:18 p.m. local time Thursday, Coast Guard Lt. Commander Benjamin McIntyre-Coble said.

A photo shared by the Coast Guard shows the aircraft broken into pieces in a snowy terrain. “Our thoughts are with those affected by this tragic incident,” the USCG said on X.

The search for the aircraft had been complicated by the fact that the missing plane had not communicated its position through an emergency transmitter, officials said.

Searchers had scoured the snowy ground in the Nome area and sea ice offshore, authorities have said. Poor weather conditions hindered searches by air Thursday, and initial search flights by C-130 crews from the Coast Guard and US Air Force turned up nothing, the Nome Volunteer Fire Department said Friday morning.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the Federal Aviation Administration “is providing an investigator from the Aviation Safety Office of Accident and Prevention,” as well as local support from the FAA’s aviation safety inspectors.

“Say a prayer tonight for the 10 souls who lost their lives on the Bering Air flight in Alaska,” Duffy said in a statement on X.

At a news conference Friday before officials said a plane was found, McIntyre-Coble said there was “some sort of item of interest” identified by an aircraft involved in the search efforts, and the Coast Guard was heading to its location.

Visibility was better for searchers Friday morning: The sky was clear at Nome Airport around 10 a.m., with temperatures of around 5 degrees. The National Guard and Coast Guard added helicopter search teams to the effort Friday morning, while another Coast Guard C-130 landed in Nome to assist with the search, the fire department said.

All families of passengers on the missing flight “have been notified,” the fire department said Friday, without elaborating; no names have been released. The passengers on the plane are all adults, Alaska State Troopers Lt. Ben Endres said at the news conference.

“Please keep families in your thoughts at this time,” the fire department said.

The tragedy comes as US air safety is under scrutiny as investigators probe two deadly incidents from last week: a January 29 midair collision of a US military Black Hawk helicopter and a passenger jet near Washington, DC, that left 67 people dead; and a January 31 crash of a medevac jet in Philadelphia that killed seven.

The plane did not communicate through an emergency locator transmitter, a device that can broadcast distress signals to help locate downed aircraft, the fire department said Friday.

Every plane has an emergency locater transmitter, which is a device that, if exposed to seawater, sends a signal to a satellite, which then relays that message back to the Coast Guard if there’s an aircraft “in distress,” McIntyre-Coble said.

“There have been no ELT notifications to the United States Coast Guard. Why that has occurred, or why that hasn’t occurred is, not something that we’re entirely clear about,” according to McIntyre-Coble.

The FBI was assisting the search with technical resources, including working to geolocate the cell phones of the plane’s passengers, a bureau spokesperson told CNN. FBI field offices have personnel specially trained in analyzing cellular telephone tower data, which can assist authorities in geolocating the last registered location of a device.

Details of disappearance

The plane missing in Alaska, a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, was last seen over the Norton Sound around 3:16 p.m. Thursday, data from flight tracker FlightRadar 24 shows. Around that time, light snow was reported at Nome Airport with temperatures around 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

The plane’s pilot had told air traffic control that he intended to enter a holding pattern while waiting for a runway to be cleared, the Nome Volunteer Fire Department said.

On Thursday evening, hours after contact was lost, conditions around Nome Airport included light snow and freezing drizzle. At one point, visibility was down to half a mile, with forecasts of wind gusts up to 35 mph overnight.

“If that bad weather coated the wings with ice … the performance of the aircraft would degrade, and it could stall and crash,” CNN aviation analyst Miles O’Brien said Friday morning. “But there are places where the ice (in the sea below) is actually thick enough to support the craft, so that should give searchers some bit of hope.”

First responders urged the public not to form their own search parties due to the weather and safety concerns.

Bering Air is based in Nome and serves more than 30 local communities, according to its website.

“Staff at Bering Air is working hard to gather details, get emergency assistance, search and rescue going,” said David Olson, director of operations for Bering Air, the Associated Press reported. CNN has sought comment from Bering Air, which has been operating in Alaska since 1979.

A fire department crew also was headed down the coast Friday morning to cover ground inland and along the coastline, the department said. The Coast Guard was planning to drop a buoy in the water to track and monitor ice movement to inform their search, the fire department said.

Hospitals were gearing up in case they needed to respond, with the Norton Sound Health Corp. “Standing ready to respond to a community medical emergency,” it said. The Norton Sound Regional Hospital also set up a family center for loved ones of the passengers to gather while waiting for news.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy and his wife “are heartbroken by the loss of the 10 people on the Bering Air flight,” he said Friday in a post on X.

“Our prayers are with the families, friends, and communities mourning this tragedy,” the governor said. “We are grateful to the search teams who worked tirelessly to locate the aircraft. I ask all Alaskans to keep those affected in their thoughts and prayers.”

CNN’s Robert Shackelford, Amanda Jackson, Josh Campbell, Jeremy Harlan and Martin Goillandeau contributed to this report.

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