Bering Air Flight 445 was a scheduled domestic flight from

Unalakleet Airport Unalakleet Airport is a state-owned public-use airport located one nautical mile (2 km) north of the central business district of Unalakleet, a city in the Nome Census Area of the U.S. state of Alaska. Facilities and aircraft Unalakleet ...

Nome Airport Nome Airport is a state-owned public-use airport located two nautical miles (4 km) west of the central business district of Nome, a city in the Nome Census Area of the U.S. state of Alaska. As per Federal Aviation Administration r ...

which crashed on February 6, 2025 while flying over

Norton Sound The Norton Sound ( Inupiaq: ''Imaqpak'') is an inlet of the Bering Sea on the western coast of the U.S. state of Alaska, south of the Seward Peninsula. It is about 240 km (150 mi) long and 200 km (125 mi) wide. The Yukon Riv ...

. The Cessna 208B Grand Caravan EX was operated by Bering Air of

Nome Nome may refer to: Country subdivision * Nome (Egypt), an administrative division within ancient Egypt * Nome (Greece), the administrative division immediately below the ''peripheries of Greece'' (, pl. ) Places United States * Nome, Alaska ...

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

. The Grand Caravan was reported missing, and a search was made, ending with the wreckage being found the next day, with all 10 occupants found to have been killed.

Background

Aircraft

The aircraft was a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan EX operated by Bering Air,

registered Registered may refer to: * Registered mail, letters, packets or other postal documents considered valuable and in need of a chain of custody * Registered trademark symbol, symbol ® that provides notice that the preceding is a trademark or service ...

as N321BA with

serial number A serial number (SN) is a unique identifier used to ''uniquely'' identify an item, and is usually assigned incrementally or sequentially. Despite being called serial "numbers", they do not need to be strictly numerical and may contain letters ...

208B5613. The aircraft was manufactured in 2020.

Passengers and crew

Nine passengers and one pilot, all adults with ages ranging from 30 to 58 years were on board the aircraft. On February 7, 2025, the Coast Guard announced that all 10 people had died in the crash. Two passengers were identified as utility operation employees under the division of Environmental Health and Engineering team of the

Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) is a non-profit health organization based in Anchorage, Alaska, which provides health services to 158,000 Alaska Natives and Native Americans in the United States, American Indians in Alaska. Estab ...

. They were reportedly on a work trip to Unalakleet to assist with a heating system for a water plant.

Accident

The scheduled domestic flight, operating as Flight 445, departed from

and took off from Runway 33 at 2:38 p.m. AKST. It was expected to arrive at

at 4:20 p.m. According to

Flightradar24 Flightradar24 is a Swedish Internet-based service that shows real-time aircraft flight tracking information on a map. It includes flight tracking information, origins and destinations, flight numbers, aircraft types, positions, altitudes, headi ...

, the last position transmitted by the aircraft was at 3:16 p.m., with an altitude of . The aircraft climbed to a cruising altitude of about . Prior to the disappearance on radar, the flight's pilot informed

Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center (PAZA/ZAN, radio communications: Anchorage Center) is an Area Control Center operated by the Federal Aviation Administration just outside the main gate of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson at 700 North B ...

that he would begin a holding pattern with the plane while waiting for the runway to be cleared of

snow Snow consists of individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water througho ...

Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Benjamin McIntyre-Coble said that no

distress signals Distress may refer to: * Distress (medicine), an aversive state in which a person shows maladaptive behaviors * Mental distress (or psychological distress) * Distress, or distraint, the act of seizing goods to compel payment * ''Distress'' (novel ...

were received from the plane. US Civil Air Patrol stated that around 3:18 p.m., the aircraft had undergone "some kind of event which caused them to experience a rapid loss in elevation and a rapid loss in speed". The Coast Guard said the plane went missing about southeast of Nome. The aircraft was found to have crashed onto an ice floe in Norton Sound approximately southeast of its destination at Nome.

Response

The Nome Volunteer Fire Department conducted ground searches from

and White Mountain, but were limited in their ability to conduct air searches due to poor weather. The

United States Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and Admiralty law, law enforcement military branch, service branch of the armed forces of the United States. It is one of the country's eight Uniformed services ...

and

Air Force An air force in the broadest sense is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an army aviati ...

assisted with rescue efforts, flying over the area in order to locate the aircraft. A

C-130 Hercules The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is an American four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft designed and built by Lockheed Corporation, Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin). Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130 w ...

was also dispatched by the Coast Guard from

Elmendorf Air Force Base Elmendorf Air Force Base is a United States Air Force (USAF) facility in Anchorage, Alaska. Originally known as Elmendorf Field, it became Elmendorf Air Force Base after World War II. It is the home of the Headquarters, Alaskan Air Command ( ...

in Anchorage to search over Norton Sound. Several Bering Air planes also flew over the area.

Alaska State Troopers The Alaska State Troopers, officially the Division of Alaska State Troopers (AST), is the state police agency of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is a division of the Alaska Department of Public Safety (DPS). The AST is a full-service law enforcem ...

also participated in the search. Norton Sound Health Corporation, a local hospital in Nome, issued a statement saying it was "standing ready to respond to a community medical emergency." The US Coast Guard of Alaska announced the end of the search on

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

, upon discovering the plane's remains. It said that nobody survived the crash. Recovery of the bodies of the victims was completed by February 9. Retrieval operations were affected by warnings of an upcoming winter storm and the fact that the ice floe in which the aircraft crashed was moving at a rate of about 5 miles (8 kilometers) a day.

Reactions

Alaskan Senator

Lisa Murkowski Lisa Ann Murkowski ( ; born May 22, 1957) is an American attorney and politician serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States senator from the state of Alaska, having held the seat since 2002. She is the first woman ...

expressed her prayers and condolences towards the families and friends of the passengers, those in Bering Air, and the community of Nome, in a post on

. The Governor of Alaska Mike Dunleavy and Alaskan Junior Senator Dan Sullivan similarly expressed their condolences on Twitter. Members of both the Nome and Unalakleet communities expressed grief over the accident. Unalakleet's City Administrator, Kelsi Ivanoff, stated that the city is "No stranger to losing community members to plane wrecks", and as a result, the outcome of the incident, "Hits really close to home for our community.” Prayer vigils were held in Nome for the victims and search personnel on February 7. Following the announcement of the plane crash on February 7, CEO Natasha Singh and Vice President David Beveridge of the

made statements during a press conference to honor their workers who were identified as victims of the flight. Bering Air set up a dedicated phone line to assist relatives of the crash victims.

Investigation

The

National Transportation Safety Board The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and inci ...

(NTSB) announced that they would launch an investigation into the cause of the fatal crash. Clint Johnson, chief of the NTSB Alaska region, stated saying "We are very much in the preliminary stages of this investigation" at a news briefing, and that the agency was well-aware of the crash and have been monitoring developments. NTSB Chair

Jennifer Homendy Jennifer L. Esposito Homendy (born November 26, 1971) is an American government official, currently serving as the 15th chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) since August 2021, having been a member of the NTSB since August 2018 ...

travelled to

in the weekend following the crash and spoke with reporters at a press briefing in Anchorage. A preliminary report released by the NTSB on March 19, 2025, revealed that the plane took off with a weight of 9,865 pounds (4,474 kg), which was 1,058 pounds (480 kg) over limit in icing conditions and more than 800 pounds (363 kg) over limit in regular conditions. The report also revealed that icing was discovered on the tail of the airplane.

References

External links

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Bering Air plane that crashed in Alaska was overweight before it took off, new NTSB report says
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bering Air Flight 445 2025 in Alaska February 2025 in the United States Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States in 2025 Airliner accidents and incidents in Alaska Accidents and incidents involving the Cessna 208 Caravan Nome Census Area, Alaska