BREAKING: Search Underway As American Aircraft With 10 On Board Goes Missing

I cover the news for a living and when I came across this post from Shannon Watts it caught my attention:

How is a missing American aircraft with 10 people on board not a major story this morning?

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) February 7, 2025

She’s right, I’ve been covering the news since I woke up today, and this story had not crossed my desk yet.

But it’s real and it absolutely should be covered.

🚨#BREAKING: Search underway after a Bering Air flight carrying 10 passengers has gone missing

📌#Nome | #Alaska

At this time Emergency crews in Nome, Alaska, are urgently searching for a missing aircraft. The Bering Air Cessna 208B Grand Caravan EX, registration number… pic.twitter.com/mrg7kfLQ8i

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) February 7, 2025

At this time Emergency crews in Nome, Alaska, are urgently searching for a missing aircraft. The Bering Air Cessna 208B Grand Caravan EX, registration number N321BA, carrying 10 passengers, departed from Unalakleet, Alaska, on a scheduled flight to Nome but disappeared en route. The aircraft last made contact shortly after takeoff before vanishing from radar. Search and rescue teams, including local authorities and the Alaska Air National Guard, have launched a coordinated ground and aerial search. Officials are urging residents in remote areas to report any signs of wreckage as efforts intensify.

How does a plane just “go missing”?

Don’t we have sufficient technology in 2025 that something like this should never happen?

We should have sufficient technology to prevent crashes as well, but just “gone missing”?  Really, in 2025?

Here’s what we know so far from the AP:

Rescuers searched Friday for any sign of a plane that went missing while carrying 10 people across Alaska’s Norton Sound south of the Arctic Circle.

The U.S. Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules crew searched the area between White Mountain and Nome but did not find the missing plane, officials said on X. A Jayhawk helicopter was brought in early Friday. A National Transportation Safety Board spokesperson said the agency is monitoring the situation.

The Bering Air Caravan, a single-engine turboprop, was heading from Unalakleet to Nome on Thursday afternoon with nine passengers and a pilot, according to Alaska’s Department of Public Safety. Authorities were working to determine its last known coordinates.

Unalakleet is a community of about 690 people in western Alaska, about 150 miles (about 240 kilometers) southeast of Nome and 395 miles (about 640 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage.

The disappearance marks the third major U.S. aviation mishap in eight days. A commercial jetliner and an Army helicopter collided near the nation’s capital on Jan. 29, killing 67 people. A medical transportation plane crashed in Philadelphia on Jan. 31, killing the six people onboard and another person on the ground.

The Cessna Caravan left Unalakleet at 2:37 p.m., and officials lost contact with it less than an hour later, according to David Olson, director of operations for Bering Air. The aircraft was 12 miles (19 kilometers) offshore, the U.S. Coast Guard said. It was operating at its maximum passenger capacity, according to the airline’s description of the plane.

“Staff at Bering Air is working hard to gather details, get emergency assistance, search and rescue going,” Olson said.

Bering Air serves 32 villages in western Alaska from hubs in Nome, Kotzebue and Unalakleet. Most destinations receive twice-daily scheduled flights Monday through Saturday.

ADVERTISEMENT

Absolutely terrifying, imagine being lost or stranded up in the Arctic circle….

Polar bears and Grizzlies everywhere.

Temps at dangerously low conditions.

No help for miles.

Absolutely devastating.

CNN adds the following:

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.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Visibility appeared to be better for searchers Friday morning, with clear skies reported at Nome Airport around 7 a.m., with winds around 10 mph and temperatures of around 7 degrees.

The fire department urged the public not to form their own search parties due to the weather and safety concerns.

The FBI is assisting the search with technical resources, including working to geolocate 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.

The flight tracker also showed a Coast Guard HC-130 flying near the plane’s last known location on Thursday evening, with the fire department saying it carried “specialized equipment for search and rescue that enables them to locate objects and people through no visibility conditions.”

The Coast Guard searched an area between Nome and White Mountain but found nothing, the service said Friday morning. A Coast Guard helicopter crew also was heading to the area to help, the service said.

The National Guard and the Air Force each had a C-130 searching, also, but neither had reported seeing the missing craft as of 12:30 a.m. local time Friday, the fire department said.

We’ll continue to monitor and bring you updates as we have them.