Search called off for small airplane that vanished in fog and rain over Alaska

The search has been suspended for a small airplane with three people aboard that went missing over southeast Alaska last weekend.

“The decision to suspend is never easy,” said Lt. Matt Naylor, the search mission coordinator, said in a social media post on X Monday evening. Pilot Samuel Wright of Haines flew the single-propeller, 1948 Beechcraft Bonanza to Juneau on Saturday and left that afternoon after picking up passengers Hans Munich and Tanya Hutchins, Coast Guard spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Mike Salerno told the Anchorage Daily News .

The plane was headed to Yakutat, about 275 miles (442 kilometers) northwest of Juneau, where Munich and Hutchins live. However, a friend tracking the plane online said the radar stopped near Mount Crillon in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, about 100 miles west of Juneau. That friend alerted authorities later Saturday that the plane was overdue.

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A search that began Saturday included a Coast Guard helicopter, plane and boat crews. On Sunday, a good Samaritan aircraft and a U.S. Air Force plane joined the search.

Weather conditions were generally poor with fog, rain and gusty winds when the plane was last tracked, Salerno said. A plane attempting an emergency landing at an airport in northeastern Ohio ended in tragedy when it crashed, killing all three people on board, according to authorities.

The Federal Aviation Administration revealed on Saturday that the twin-engine Beechcraft 60 crashed near the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Ohio around 6:45pm on Friday.

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The Ohio State Highway Patrol post in Trumbull County, which was alerted shortly after 7 pm on Saturday, confirmed that the crash just north of the airport resulted in the deaths of the pilot and two passengers. The victims' families have been informed. Anthony Trevena, executive director of the Western Reserve Port Authority , told WKBN-TV that the crash occurred following an unscheduled emergency landing by a plane not associated with the air reserve station at the airport.

Mechanical failure is suspected, as reported by the station. The National Transportation Safety Board will conduct an investigation into the incident, the FAA said.