How is a plane missing? Search for the Alaska aircraft is in progress

On February 8, 2025By Littum

Employees in Alaska are searching in the countryside and the sea Friday after a small plane that disappeared, while the nation is waiting for news of the 10 people on board and wondering what caused the plane to drop the radar.

The plane was over the Norton sound off the coast of its destination in Nome, Alaska when it stopped sending its location signal on Thursday afternoon, according to the Alaska Department of Public Safety and the US Coast Guard. Just before it disappeared, the aircraft’s data showed that they experienced a quick loss of height and speed, officials said Friday.

Since then, search herds have been looking for a sign of Turboprop Cessna Caravan, driven by Bering Air.

Although air incidents involving death are rare, minor accidents often happen throughout the country, and sometimes plans to send signals about where they are, said aviation lawyer and former Air Force Navigator Jim Brauchle. In Alaska, many people come around small aircraft, and the state has a disproportionately large number of accidents compared to the rest of the country, according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.

“When communication is gone and they can’t identify where the aircraft is or talk to someone on the radio, that’s how they classify the aircraft as a lack of,” Brauchle said.

It is a less frequent problem today thanks to technology called automatically dependent monitoring-Broadcast or ADS-B, which is required on all aircraft and broadcasts of location data for air traffic controllers. Still, “it happens,” Brauchle said.

Here’s what to know about how a plane can go missing:

How officials may lose a plane’s location

Aircraft flying with a transponder that sends continuous data about its current height, air velocity, latitude and longitude to recipients on the ground. If the transponder stops sending signals, it may be due to an electric failure or a problem with the transmitter itself, Brauchle said.

Loss of location data would not necessarily indicate a disaster on his own, he said, but the fact that the aircraft never came to its destination, even after many hours is not a good sign.

If there was a catastrophic mechanical failure in the aircraft, a control problem, or if the pilot was spatially disoriented due to visibility and weather conditions, the aircraft probably crashed over land or sea, he said.

Where did the Alaska aircraft disappear?

Officials said the aircraft’s last known position was over the water. It is likely that the aircraft went down near where the transponder stopped sharing location data, Brauchle said, but if there was a loss of power to the plane, it may have slid further away as it fell down. Authorities are likely to look at the last height reading to estimate how far it could have driven from the last position, he said.

Snow and freezing of fog were reported in the flight’s flight road on Thursday with visibility between 1 and 7 miles, where it went and a half kilometers to 8 miles where it was going to land, according to Accuweather Senior Meteorologist Tom Vines.

“The weather conditions probably varied greatly along the planned flight road over Norton Sound. Water temperatures have been near freezing in Norton Sound. Hypothermia and cold water shocks are a major problem for the first respondents and officials working on search and rescue operations near or on the water, “the Chin said in a statement.

Several state and federal agencies are searching with air and soil, sheds sea ice and coastline, according to Nome Volunteer Fire Department in an update Friday. The public may not know exactly what happened for quite a long time when the aviation authorities conduct a full investigation, Brauchle said.

It is not likely that anyone in the plane survived, another tragedy in a number of aviation disasters since the year began, Brauchle said. On January 29, an American Airlines passenger aircraft and an army helicopter near Washington, DC, collided, killing 67 people in the deadliest air disaster for more than two decades. Just days later, a Medevac jet crashed into a busy neighborhood in Philadelphia, killed seven people and wounded over 20 others. Brauchle said the recent high-profile accidents set the nation on high alarm for flight events, but it is coincidence that they happened back-to-back.

“My original thought is with the families,” said Brauchle. He has represented family members who have lost loved ones in aviation accidents. “People are not going to die in plane accidents.”

Contributing: Eve Chen, Thao Nguyen and Christopher Cann, USA Today; Reuters