The remains of all 10 people killed in Alaska plane crash have been recovered, authorities say

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The remains of all 10 people killed when their small plane crashed into ice on the Bering Sea have been recovered, authorities said.

The Nome Volunteer Fire Department made the announcement on its Facebook page Saturday afternoon. Recovery crews had been racing to recover the bodies before a winter storm was expected to hit the region.

“All ten individuals aboard the Bering Air plane have been officially brought home,” the fire department wrote in the social media post at about 3 p.m.

Crews were still working on recovering the aircraft, the fire department said.

The Bering Air single-engine turboprop plane was traveling from Unalakleet to the hub community of Nome when it disappeared Thursday afternoon. It was found the next day after an extensive search with all nine passengers and the pilot dead, making it one of the deadliest plane crashes in the state in 25 years.

The aircraft is on an ice floe that is drifting about 5 miles (8 kilometers) a day, creating difficult conditions for recovery crews, said National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy during a press conference Saturday afternoon.

“Please know that we'll work diligently to determine how this happened with the ultimate goal of improving safety in Alaska and across the United States,” said Homendy.

As the community tried to process the deadly event, crews worked swiftly on unstable, slushy sea ice to recover the bodies and the wreckage. The National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory, with snow and winds up to 45 miles per hour (72 kilometers per hour) expected to hit the region Saturday night, lasting into Sunday evening.

Among those killed in the crash were Rhone Baumgartner and Kameron Hartvigson. They had traveled to Unalakleet to service a heat recovery system vital to the community’s water plant, according to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

"The loss of these two incredible individuals and everyone else on board the plane will be felt all over Alaska,” David Beveridge, vice president of environmental health and engineering for the organization, said in a statement.

The pilot, 34-year-old Chad Antill of Nome, was also killed. The other victims ranged in age from 30 to 58 years old.

The flight was a regularly scheduled commuter trip, according to Lt. Ben Endres of the Alaska State Troopers.

A photo provided by the Coast Guard showed the plane’s splintered body and debris lying on the sea ice. Two people in brightly colored emergency gear circled the wreckage.

“It’s hard to accept the reality of our loss,” U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said during an evening news conference.

Nome Mayor John Handeland choked up as he discussed the deaths and the response effort.

“Nome is a strong community, and in challenging times we come together and support each other. I expect the outpouring of support to continue in the coming days as we all work to recover from this tragic incident,” Handeland said.

The Cessna Caravan left Unalakleet at 2:37 p.m. Thursday, and officials lost contact with it less than an hour later, according to David Olson, director of operations for Bering Air. There was light snow and fog, with a temperature of 17 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 8.3 degrees Celsius), according to the National Weather Service.

The Coast Guard said the aircraft went missing about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Nome.

Radar forensic data provided by the U.S. Civil Air Patrol indicated that about 3:18 p.m., the plane had “some kind of event which caused them to experience a rapid loss in elevation and a rapid loss in speed,” Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Benjamin McIntyre-Coble said. “What that event is, I can't speculate to.”

McIntyre-Coble said he was unaware of any distress signals from the aircraft. Planes carry an emergency locating transmitter. If exposed to seawater, the device sends a signal to a satellite, which then relays that message back to the Coast Guard to indicate an aircraft may be in distress. No such messages were received by the Coast Guard, he said.

Rescuers were searching the aircraft’s last known location by helicopter when the wreckage was spotted, said Mike Salerno, a spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard. Two rescue swimmers were lowered to investigate.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending nine people to the scene from various states.

Flying is an essential mode of transportation in Alaska due to the vastness of the landscape and limited infrastructure, and it’s common to travel by small plane.

The plane's crash 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 on board and another person on the ground.

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.

“Our hearts are heavy with grief as we process this heartbreaking news,” Bering Air wrote in a statement on its website. “At this time, our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of those affected by this tragedy."

A phone line was set up to give updates and emotional support to people who had loved ones on board, Bering Air said. The company asked for privacy for everyone involved, and said it was committed to supporting authorities.

Unalakleet is a community of about 690 people about 150 miles (about 240 kilometers) southeast of Nome and 395 miles (about 640 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage. The village is on the Iditarod trail, route of the world's most famous sled dog race, during which mushers and their teams must cross the frozen Norton Sound.

Nome, a Gold Rush town, is just south of the Arctic Circle and is known as the ending point of the 1,000-mile (1,610-kilometer) Iditarod. The city said prayer vigils would be held Friday for those on board the plane, friends and family and those involved in search efforts.

Golden reported from Seattle. Martha Bellisle in Seattle and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington, contributed to this report.

FILE - The city of Nome, Alaska, awaits the first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race musher Tuesday, March 14, 2023. Ryan Redington won the race. (Loren Holmes/Anchorage Daily News via AP, File)

FILE - This Jan. 18, 2020, photo shows people preparing to get on an airplane at the airport in Bethel, Alaska, for a flight to Toksook Bay. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)

A Bering Air plane prepares to arrive in Ambler on Saturday, April 9, 2022. (Emily Mesner/Anchorage Daily News via AP)

This photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard on Friday, Feb. 7, 2025, shows a small commuter plane that crashed in western Alaska on a flight that was bound for the hub community of Nome. (U.S. Coast Guard via AP)

FILE - Ice is visible in the Bering Sea Jan. 22, 2020, as seen from a small plane airplane near the western Alaska coast. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)

FILE - Ice is visible in the Bering Sea Jan. 22, 2020, as seen from a small plane airplane near the western Alaska coast. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)

This photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard on Friday, Feb. 7, 2025, shows a small commuter plane that crashed in western Alaska on a flight that was bound for the hub community of Nome. (U.S. Coast Guard via AP)

This photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard on Friday, Feb. 7, 2025, shows a small commuter plane that crashed in western Alaska on a flight that was bound for the hub community of Nome. (U.S. Coast Guard via AP)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A series of separate meetings between American, Russian and Ukrainian interlocutors entered their third day on Tuesday as U.S. negotiators shuttled back to discussions with their Ukrainian counterparts in the Saudi capital, a continuation of talks with Kyiv officials that began Sunday over a potential ceasefire in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, a Kremlin official said Tuesday that the talks between U.S. and Russian officials in Riyadh the previous day would likely lead to further contacts between Washington and Moscow, but that no concrete plans have yet been made.

The three days of meetings — which did not include direct Russian-Ukrainian negotiations — are part of an attempt to hammer out details on a partial pause in the 3-year-old war in Ukraine. It has been a struggle to reach even a limited, 30-day ceasefire — which Moscow and Kyiv agreed to in principle last week -- with both sides continuing to attack each other with drones and missiles.

Russia and Ukraine have also taken differing interpretations of what a possible partial ceasefire would look like, and disagreed over what kinds of targets would be included in a pause on strikes — even after U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with the leaders of both countries to advance a deal.

Yet despite the numerous sticking points — the White House has said a partial ceasefire would include ending attacks on “energy and infrastructure,” while the Kremlin declared that the agreement referred more narrowly to “energy infrastructure” — attempts to secure safe commercial shipping in the Black Sea appeared to garner support in principle from both parties, though no specific agreements have been announced.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday told the country’s state-run Channel One TV station that the Russian and U.S. delegations in Riyadh had discussed “primarily issues of safe shipping in the Black Sea” — a major shipping corridor on which both Russia and Ukraine have ports and coastline.

Lavrov also said that Moscow is up for resuming — “in some form, acceptable to everyone” — a 2022 deal that allowed Ukraine to ship grain through the Black Sea to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where hunger was a growing threat and high food prices had pushed more people into poverty.

The landmark Black Sea Grain initiative was brokered by the U.N. and Turkey in the summer of 2022; Moscow halted it in July 2023 until its demands to get Russian food and fertilizer to the world were met.

Serhii Leshchenko, advisor to the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that U.S-Ukrainian talks in Riyadh on Sunday had included “the security of shipping and infrastructure, including safety for the (Ukrainian) ports of Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kherson.”

Leshchenko added that the Ukrainian delegation would brief Zelenskyy following renewed talks on Tuesday with the U.S. delegation, adding: “Ukraine is ready to support initiatives that will make diplomacy a means of pressure to compel Russia to end the war.”

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the the outcome of the U.S-Russia talks in Riyadh “has been reported in the capitals” and was currently being “analyzed” by Moscow and Washington, but that the Kremlin has no plans to release further details of what was discussed to the public.

“We’re talking about technical negotiations, negotiations with immersion in details," Peskov said, adding that while there are currently no plans for Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to speak, such a conversation could be quickly organized if the need arises.

“There is an understanding that the contacts will continue, but there is nothing concrete at the moment,” Peskov said. He added that that there are no plans to hold a three-way meeting between Russia, the U.S. and Ukraine.

Senior Russian lawmaker Grigory Karasin, who took part in the Russia-U.S. talks in Riyadh on Monday, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the conversation was “very interesting, difficult, but quite constructive.”

“We were at it all day from morning until late at night,” Karasin was quoted by the agency as saying on Tuesday.

Speaking about the war in Ukraine, Karasin said Moscow’s and Washington’s positions don’t always align, but that the two parties will continue to look for ways to cooperate, as there is now an understanding that cooperation is necessary to resolve the conflict. The lawmaker added that talks between expert groups from Russia and the U.S. could continue.

The number of people injured Monday in a Russian missile strike on the center of the Ukrainian city of Sumy rose to 101 people including 23 children, according to the Sumy regional administration.

The strike on Sumy, across the border from Russia’s Kursk region which was partially occupied by Ukraine since August, hit residential buildings and a school, which had to be evacuated due to the attack.

Meanwhile, Russian forces launched one ballistic missile and 139 long-range strike and decoy drones into Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force. Those attacks affected seven regions of Ukraine.

Two people were injured after drone debris fell on a warehouse in the Poltava region, administration head Volodymyr Kohut wrote on Telegram Tuesday, while two people were injured outside the city of Zaporizhzhia, according to the head of the region.

One man suffered injuries after a Russian drone attack in Kherson, city administration head Roman Mrochko wrote on Telegram Tuesday.

Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, a paramedic evacuates an elderly resident whose house was hit by Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire following a Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, a psychologist works with residents of houses which were hit by a Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire following a Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)