A search is underway for a plane carrying 10 people that went missing as it journeyed across Alaska’s Norton Sound south of the Arctic Circle on Thursday afternoon. It is the third major incident in U.S. aviation over the past eight days.
AP reports the Bering Air Caravan was heading from Unalakleet to Nome with nine passengers and a pilot, according to Alaska’s Department of Public Safety.
Authorities and rescue workers were working to determine the Cessna’s last known coordinates.
The volunteer fire department in Nome said the pilot had told air traffic controllers that “he intended to enter a holding pattern while waiting for the runway to be cleared,” the BBC reports.
Unalakleet is a community of about 690 people in western Alaska, about 150 miles southeast of Nome and 395 miles northwest of Anchorage.
The names of the people onboard have not yet been released.
Nome, a Gold Rush town, is just south of the Arctic Circle and is known as the ending point of the 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
The search for the plane comes as U.S. air safety investigators continue to probe two deadly incidents in recent weeks.
These tragedies include a midair collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and a passenger jet near Washington, DC, that left 67 people dead, and the crash of a medevac jet in Philadelphia that killed seven.
