Bering Air Flight 445
Textron Aviation Inc 208B · Loss of control due to in-flight icing, pilot error; loss of situational awareness, and lack of FAA oversight
From Unalakleet Airport (PAUN) to Nome Airport (PAOM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC25MA018
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- Event fatalities
- 10 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 10
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Textron Aviation Inc 208B
- Flight
- 8E445
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N321BA
- Operator
- Bering Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Unalakleet Airport (PAUN), Unalakleet, AKTo Nome Airport (PAOM), Nome, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2020)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · descent
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Organizational issues › Management
- Organizational issues › Support/oversight/monitoring
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
Bering Air Flight 445 was a scheduled domestic flight from Unalakleet Airport to Nome Airport which crashed on February 6, 2025 while flying over Norton Sound. The Cessna 208 Caravan was operated by Bering Air of Nome, Alaska. The 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.
Accident
The scheduled domestic flight, operating as Flight 445, departed from Unalakleet Airport and took off from Runway 33 at 2:38 p.m. AKST. It was expected to arrive at Nome Airport at 4:20 p.m. According to Flightradar24, the last position transmitted by the aircraft was at 3:16 p.m., with an altitude of 5,300 feet.
The aircraft climbed to a cruising altitude of about 7,700 feet. Prior to the disappearance on radar, the flight's pilot informed Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center that he would begin a holding pattern with the plane while waiting for the runway to be cleared of snow.
Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Benjamin McIntyre-Coble said that no distress signals 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 30 mi southeast of Nome.
The aircraft was found to have crashed onto an ice floe in Norton Sound approximately 34 mi southeast of its destination at Nome.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board (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 travelled to Alaska 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.
The final report was released by NTSB on July 30, 2026 attributed the cause to poor pilot control and the plane being over 1000 lbs its rated maximum takeoff capacity for icing conditions. It also attributed the safety culture of Bering Air, which allowed for overloaded flights.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Bering Air Flight 445” (revision 1366991989, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB narrative
On February 6, 2025, about 1520 Alaska standard time, a Textron Aviation 208B airplane, N321BA, operated as Bering Air flight 445, was destroyed when it was involved in an accident near Nome, Alaska. The pilot and nine passengers were fatally injured. The airplane was operated under Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 135 as a scheduled charter flight.
Probable cause
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the pilot’s inadequate airspeed management due to workload and degraded situation awareness and his improper inputs leading up to and during the aerodynamic stall, which increased the airplane’s angle of attack. Also causal was operation of the airplane above maximum gross weight, which reduced the airplane’s stall margin. Contributing to the accident were the operator’s inadequate safety management, which allowed the routine operation of flights that exceeded weight limitations, and the Federal Aviation Administration’s inadequate oversight of the operator, which failed to identify and address the routine operation of overweight flights.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: Bering Air Flight 445
- Article
- Bering Air Flight 445
- Revision
- 1366991989 · 2026-07-31 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q132161853
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record ANC25MA018
- Event ID
- 20250207199662
- Case number
- ANC25MA018
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Bering Air Flight 445" (page 79156768, revision 1366991989); merged with NTSB case ANC25MA018 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record ANC25MA018: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from Wikidata (P17); country from NTSB record ANC25MA018
- Map position
- NTSB record ANC25MA018: NTSB API eventLatitude/eventLongitude
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record ANC25MA018: aircraft; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record ANC25MA018: operated under Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Fatalities
- NTSB record ANC25MA018: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record ANC25MA018: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Bering Air Flight 445" and NTSB case ANC25MA018, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.