No survivors after missing aircraft is found in Alaska, airline official says

Rescue teams on Friday found the wreckage of a commuter flight that disappeared in Alaska and determined that none of the 10 people on board had survived, an official with the airline that operated the aircraft said.

David Olson, director of operations for Bering Air, said in a brief phone interview that he had no other information about the discovery.

The U.S. Coast Guard on Friday evening posted on the social media platform X saying the flight had been found 34 miles southeast of Nome, Alaska, with three bodies inside. “The remaining 7 people are believed to be inside the aircraft but are currently inaccessible due to the condition of the plane,” the Coast Guard said. “Our heartfelt condolences are with those affected by this tragic incident.”

Earlier Friday, officials said they had identified an “item of interest” in the search but did not identify that item.

“What that is and what that might shake out to be and what the status of the people who may or may not be there is, I can’t speculate to at this time,” Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Benjamin McIntyre-Coble said at a news conference.

State troopers were alerted to the overdue Bering Air flight, which was carrying nine passengers and a pilot from Unalakleet, Alaska, to Nome, at 4 p.m. Thursday. The aircraft was 12 miles offshore when its position was lost, the U.S. Coast Guard for the Alaska region said on X.

On Friday, the Coast Guard said the aircraft appeared to have “experienced some kind of event” at about 3:18 p.m. Thursday, causing it to rapidly lose elevation and speed. Details of that event were unclear, McIntyre-Coble told reporters.

Everyone on board the regularly scheduled flight was an adult, and their family members have been notified, authorities said. The identities of the passengers and pilot have not been released.

The aircraft’s disappearance comes days after 67 people were killed when a commercial plane and an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided near Washington, D.C., on Jan. 29. Two days later, a medical transport plane in Philadelphia crashed just a minute after takeoff, killing all six people on board and one person on the ground.

Unalakleet, in western Alaska, is home to about 700 people. It lies some 150 miles to the southeast of Nome and 395 miles northwest of Anchorage.

Bering Air, a regional air service based in Nome, operates passenger and cargo flights to 32 communities along Alaska’s northwest coast. More than 80 percent of Alaska’s communities “are inaccessible by the road system and depend on air access to provide basic needs,” the state’s transportation department wrote in a 2021 report.

A C-130 Coast Guard plane arrived in the Nome area Thursday evening after ground crews “covered ground all along the coast from Nome to Topkok,” the Nome Volunteer Fire Department wrote on Facebook. The department said the Coast Guard aircraft would “fly a grid pattern over the water and shoreline in attempts to locate the plane.”

Other helicopters operated by the Coast Guard and the Alaska National Guard are also involved in the search, officials said Friday. The fire department has asked the public not to form individual search parties “due to weather and safety concerns.” Officials are treating the response as a search and rescue mission.

Flight-tracking site Flightradar24 said on social media that the plane’s last position was received at 3:16 p.m., 38 minutes after it left Unalakleet. The pilot had told Anchorage air traffic control that he intended to enter a holding pattern while waiting for the runway to be cleared, Nome’s fire department said, citing information from Flight Service, a program of the Federal Aviation Administration.