The National Transportation Safety Board says a Bering Air flight experienced “severe icing conditions” and pointed to “the pilot’s inadequate airspeed management” and unsuccessful recovery during a stall before the plane crashed onto an ice floe in 2025.
The crash killed all nine passengers and the pilot.
The NTSB issued its final accident report on Thursday for the crash of Flight 445 on Feb. 6, 2025. The report faults the pilot for “improper inputs” before the plane stalled. It also says the plane was overweight, leaving less of a margin to avoid a stall.
In a press release Thursday, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said the crash was a result of several preventable issues.
"The tragedy of Flight 445 was not the result of a single failure, but a series of preventable breakdowns that eroded critical safety margins," said Homendy, who was on scene in Nome last year and visited the state again this week, meeting with families of the victims of the crash.
“There were problems with airspeed management,” she said Thursday in an interview at the agency’s office in Anchorage. “Between the airspeed, the increased load, the icing conditions, and some pilot inputs, he ended up in a stall.”
According to the release, the Cessna Grand Caravan 208B experienced more severe icing conditions than forecast on its way to Nome from Unalakleet. At the time, a National Weather Service forecast called for “occasional to constant moderate icing” in the area.
Homendy said the investigators found that the pilot checked the weather but did not receive support from the air carrier for deciding if it was safe to fly.
“We found that there wasn't a process in place for Bering to have a weather risk assessment of when to fly — go-no go decision,” she said. “It was all on the pilot.”
A few minutes before the crash, a controller in Anchorage told the pilot that both of Nome’s runways were temporarily closed for de-icing and said it would be fine for the pilot to “slow down a little bit.”
The pilot initially decreased speed before increasing engine power again. Flight data showed that the plane pitched nose-up at one point, then lost speed and altitude until its low airspeed awareness system activated, which disengaged the autopilot.
The controller sent a low altitude alert at 3:20 p.m. but had lost contact with the pilot. The report says the plane’s anti-icing system was working, and the pilot did use it before the crash.
The next morning, a U.S. Coast Guard plane found the wreckage resting on an ice floe east of Nome, with no survivors.
The NTSB also listed “inadequate safety management” by Bering Air as a cause of the crash — the report says the airline’s planes routinely flew while overweight. Homendy said the agency looked at 16 other Bering Air flights and found “that they had a culture of chronically underreporting loads and weight.”
Bering Air declined to provide a statement when reached for comment.
Homendy said that the agency didn't look at whether other Alaska operators were also underreporting weights, but broadly speaking, it is a concern.
She said the Federal Aviation Administration didn’t provide adequate oversight of Bering Air, particularly as it rapidly expanded in the region in recent years. She said the safety board advised the FAA to require growing operators to improve their systems for evaluating risks and ensuring that loads are accurate. She said the operators also needed to look at their pre-flight planning and how they decide whether or not to fly.
“Those, to me, are not burdensome,” Homendy said. “Those are procedures that any operator, including a single operator can put in place themselves and can save lives and frankly save a company.”
Bering Air faces three wrongful death lawsuits related to the crash. Clay Robbins is an attorney representing the family of Talaluk Driskill LaRoi Katchatag, from Unalakleet. Robbins said the suit seeks compensation for Katchatag’s children, but the family also hopes to set a standard for bush airlines across the state.
“They must be held accountable for satisfying their responsibility to exercise the highest standard of care to protect their customers from tragedies such as this, that was entirely, entirely avoidable,” Robbins said.
The report is NTSB’s final action on the crash. It calls for more training for pilots to better handle loss of control situations. It also includes a host of previous recommendations for airlines like Bering Air, called Part 135 operators, that include using certified dispatchers and expanding flight monitoring.
“I’ve seen how Alaskan communities use aviation as a lifeline,” Homendy said in a statement. “Once implemented, our recommendations will make that lifeline safer and prevent other communities from experiencing similar heartbreak.”
This story has been updated.
KNOM’s Ben Townsend contributed reporting.
