Alaska plane is found with all ten people on board dead
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10 people are missing
Breakthrough in search for missing Alaska Bering plane
18:05 EST, 7 February 2025
Published: 07:20 EST, 7 February 2025 |
Rescuers looking for a small aircraft that vanished off the coast of Alaska with ten people on board last night have discovered an 'item of interest' amid the search.
Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander McIntyre Cobel said the authorities have deployed a plane to the area to verify if it is the missing aircraft.
The tiny Bering Air Caravan took off from Unalakleet, a small community in western Alaska, and was on a short 55-minute commuter flight to Nome when it suddenly disappeared off flight radars over the Norton Sound inlet at 3:16pm local time.
Choppy seas and frigid temperatures are hampering rescue efforts, with the Coast Guard and Air Force both deploying teams.
The FBI joined the search on Friday 'to try and locate the group through cell phone tracking', and officials said they were focusing efforts on the icy shoreline in hopes of finding survivors.
Little is known about who was on board except they were all adults, but it comes just a week after 67 people were killed in the Washington DC collision of an American Airlines jet with a military Black Hawk helicopter.
Breaking:
Officials revealed at a press briefing on Friday afternoon search teams have identified an 'item of interest' in their rescue mission.
Coast Guard Lieutnant Commander McIntyre Cobel said the item was found by an aircraft not involved with the search.
He said authorities have deployed an aircraft to the area to verify if the 'item' is the missing plane.
Breaking:
The missing Bering aircraft suffered 'some kind of event' in the moments before it dropped off flight radars, officials revealed at a press briefing Friday afternoon.
Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander McIntyre Cobel said the 'event' caused the aircraft to 'rapidly lose altitude and speed'.
He said he could not comment on the nature of the event, and investigations are ongoing.
The Bering aircraft suddenly lost altitude before dropping off radar
The small Bering aircraft that vanished off the coast of Alaska on Thursday was battling freezing and treacherous conditions in the moments before it fell off flight radars.
The National Weather Service said temperatures were in the single figures at the time with light snow, wind gusts of up to 35mph, and low visibility down to just half a mile.
Call flight data showed that as the plane battled the elements, the aircraft suddenly dropped altitude before being lost by flight radar altogether.
See inside the Cessna 208B aircraft that went missing
The inside of the Cessna 208B aircraft that vanished off the coast of Alaska on Thursday has been revealed in new images.
The images, which show the same make of the Bering Air Caravan but is not the aircraft that vanished, show a tiny propeller plane with just a handful of small seats.
The aircraft, operated by Bering, is capable of flying up to 12 passengers, and is a popular aircraft in the area used to ferry people to remote locations.
The plane is able to fly for three hours on a full tank of fuel when fully stocked before it is required to refuel.
Sonar images show thick ice set in across the frozen tundra where the missing Bering aircraft is feared to have gone down.
The site is only approximately 80 miles from the Russian border, where multiple federal agencies including the FBI have gone to aid the search.
Severe weather expected to ease off after hampering search efforts
Following a day of severe freezing weather hampering search efforts, officials said Friday afternoon they expect conditions to ease for the next day.
'We received a weather update from National Weather Service this morning, and weather is looking stable for the next 24 hours to continue air search', the Nome Volunteer Fire Department said.
Authorities previously urged locals not to try and aid the search with their own planes due to the threat of inclement weather.
White Mountain fire chief Jack Adams said earlier that crews are 'hoping the plane is on land' because it 'being in the water would be the worst-case scenario.'
Search crews are stepping up their rescue efforts on land and air in hopes of finding the missing Bering aircraft, which dropped off flight radars almost 24 hours ago.
Bering Air launched two King Air jets soon after sunrise to 'fly grid patterns to canvas the area', the Nome Volunteer Fire Department said.
The department said two more helicopters are set to be deployed this afternoon.
And as officials say severe weather conditions have slowed their teams, the department said the Coast Guard is 'planning to drop a buoy to track and monitor ice movement to inform the search.
'The International Guard will help with searching in their helicopter,' the update read. 'Search and Rescue groups from White Mountain and Nome continue to search by land in the surrounding area.'