A plane carrying 10 people went missing in rural Alaska during a brutal winter storm, with search and rescue crews scouring the ground and medical personnel “standing ready”.
The “overdue” aircraft, operated by Bering Air, was reported missing just before 4 p.m. local time on Thursday while en route from Unalakleet to Nome in the west of the state.
According to Alaska’s Department of Public Safety, nine passengers and a pilot were on board the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan on Bering Air Flight 445.
The plane took off from Unalakleet, a small community of 690 people, at 2:37 p.m., and officials lost contact with it less than an hour later, according to the director of operations for Bering Air, David Olson. It went off radio roughly 10 minutes before its scheduled arrival in Nome.
It was approximately 12 miles offshore flying over the Norton Sound, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
According to officials, the plane pilot told air traffic control in Anchorage he had intended to enter a holding pattern while waiting for the runway in Nome to be cleared before the aircraft disappeared.
The Nome Volunteer Fire Department is conducting an active ground search in Nome and the White Mountains. The search has been hampered by poor weather conditions and visibility, officials said.
Light snow and freezing drizzle were seen around Nome Airport on Thursday evening, at its worst leaving visibility down to only half a mile. Wind gusts up to 35 mph were forecast overnight.
The Coast Guard and U.S. Air Force stepped in with flights planned to scope out the area and attempt to locate the missing aircraft.
The C-130 Coast Guard plane is equipped with specialized search and rescue equipment enabling the location of objects and people in low-to-no visibility conditions, officials said. The aircraft is due to fly a grid pattern over the nearby shoreline and water.
“The plane’s exact location is still unknown. We continue to expand search efforts to as many avenues as possible until the plane is located,” the fire department wrote in an update late on Thursday.
Norton Sound Health Corporation, a local hospital based in Nome, said it is “standing ready to respond to a community medical emergency”.
Alaska Senator, Dan Sullivan, took to Facebook to offer his “thoughts and prayers” for the “passengers, their families and the rescue crew”.
The search and rescue mission comes as air safety investigators continue to probe two deadly incidents in recent weeks.
A mid-air collision between an American Airlines jet and a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, DC took the lives of 67 people last Wednesday.
Two days later, a medical jet crashed in Northeast Philadelphia, killing seven people, including all six passengers on board.
