Chris Aadland
Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
(TNS)

Jul. 30—Poor pilot control in severe icing conditions on an overloaded plane caused a Bering Air plane to stall and crash on sea ice near Nome last year, killing all aboard, according to a probable cause finding issued by federal officials Thursday.

The Feb. 6, 2025, crash of the single-engine Cessna Grand Caravan, which occurred during a commuter flight from Unalakleet to Nome, killed the pilot and all nine passengers in one of Alaska's deadliest civilian aviation accidents in decades.

The official findings from the National Transportation Safety Board largely mirrored investigative documents released previously and a preliminary report the agency issued about a month after the crash.

But the final report also faulted Bering Air for underreporting aircraft weight loads in its records and allowing flights to take off carrying more weight than allowed.

"Just like any accident we investigate, it's no one single cause," NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in an interview Thursday. "In this one, we had a variety of issues, including chronic underreporting of weight on not just this aircraft but other aircraft that Bering Air was operating. In this case, this plane was overloaded by about 1,000 pounds, which is pretty significant."

Bering Air already faces several wrongful death lawsuits filed this year by multiple families of passengers who died in the crash. They accuse the company of knowingly flying an overweight plane into dangerous conditions.

Six of the passengers were returning from jobs in Unalakleet, including Anchorage-area engineers working on a water plant and a Mat-Su educator. The other passengers and the pilot, Chad Antill, were residents of Unalakleet or Nome.

A Bering Air official said the company had no comment on the report when contacted by a reporter Thursday. An attorney representing Bering Air in lawsuits filed in connection to the crash didn't respond to a message seeking reaction to the findings.

Bering Air, in operation since 1979, serves 32 villages in Western Alaska from hubs in Nome, Kotzebue and Unalakleet.

Stall follows icy conditions

On the day of the flight, forecasters issued weather advisories and said a large weather front over Western Alaska created the potential for ice buildup on the plane as it neared the Nome Airport, according to the NTSB's preliminary investigation findings.

Antill had also expressed concerns about overweight flights prior to the crash.

The flight took off from Unalakleet just before 2:40 p.m., weighing more than 1,000 pounds over the so-called "maximum gross takeoff weight" for flying in known icing conditions, the NTSB said in the preliminary report. The flight was the final of a three-leg round trip, officials said.

In Thursday's report, officials said Antill and a Bering Air dispatcher reviewed the weather forecast before the flight and didn't identify any concerns. Antill activated the plane's de-icing system after it began experiencing "severe icing conditions" about 40 minutes into the flight, according to the probable cause findings.

As the plane approached Nome, an air traffic controller contacted Antill to inform him that the airport's runways were temporarily closed to be de-iced and that he could decrease his speed to time his landing to when the runways were reopening, NTSB officials said in the final report.

The aircraft's speed fluctuated over several minutes, starting at 160 knots and decreasing to 99 knots, which resulted in a low speed alert and the autopilot system being turned off, officials said.

The plane quickly lost altitude as its speed continued to decrease with its nose pitched up between 10 and 12 degrees, which officials said was likely the result of Antill's working the plane's controls. An air traffic controller told Antill to climb to 4,000 feet at about 3:20 p.m. after the plane dropped to 3,100 feet and its speed was measured at 70 knots.

Seconds later, the controller contacted Antill again but didn't receive a response. The aircraft crashed about 32 miles east of the airport, according to the report.

Antill was overwhelmed by the number of challenges — icing on the plane and having to adjust plans while maintaining a safe speed — before taking actions that led to the plane entering an aerodynamic stall, Homendy said.

"Here, he could have taken other actions where that could have been prevented, but it got away from him, and all of a sudden it stalls and he's descending at 5,000 feet per minute," she said.

U.S. Coast Guard rescuers found the plane's wreckage the next day.

Killed in the crash were pilot and Nome resident Antill, 34; Eagle River resident JaDee Moncur, 52; Anchorage resident Ian Hofmann, 45; Anchorage resident Rhone Baumgartner, 46; Anchorage resident Kameron Hartvigson, 41; Wasilla resident Andrew Gonzalez, 30; Unalakleet resident Talaluk Driscoll LaRoi Katchatag, 34; Unalakleet resident Carol Mendiola Mooers, 48; Nome resident Donnell Erickson, 58; and Wasilla resident Liane Ryan, 52.

"We determined 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," according to the final report. "Also causal was operation of the airplane above maximum gross weight, which reduced the airplane's stall margin."

Another cause of the crash, the NTSB said, was Bering Air's "inadequate safety management, which allowed the routine operation of flights that exceeded weight limitations." The company had allowed overloaded flights to take off for days — if not longer — leading up to the fatal crash, according to the preliminary report.

The culture at Bering Air, Homendy said, resulted in chronically overloaded aircraft taking off, as well as employees keeping inaccurate or made-up weight records. Pilots felt a "constant push for more cargo to get on board" and pressure to fly in dangerous conditions, she said.

Some Bering Air flights had been flying by as much as 1,400 pounds over their limit, Homendy said.

"This wasn't just a simple error because a simple error is a one-off, maybe two," she said. "This was constant."

NTSB officials said inadequate Federal Aviation Administration oversight of the air carrier was also a factor.

Crash prompts changes, recommendations

The air carrier has made significant changes since the crash, according to a general operations manual update filed with the investigation docket. Those include new procedures that require a manager to sign off on departures in potentially dangerous weather; limits on total takeoff weight; and delaying, canceling or switching to different planes for Cessna Caravan flights into known icing conditions or switched to different planes.

Thursday's report, which is the NTSB's final action in connection to the incident, also recommended a host of policy changes the Federal Aviation Administration could implement to help prevent future accidents.

The NTSB repeated previous recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration as a result of the crash, such as requiring Part 135 airlines like Bering Air to use certified dispatchers and to install aircraft recording systems with flight data monitoring program capability. It also called for the FAA to expand flight load recordkeeping requirements to air carriers like Bering Air and to require Part 135 operators to use crash-resistant flight data recorders in their planes.

Two additional recommendations were included in the final report.

The NTSB called for pilots with carriers like Bering Air to be better trained for situations like a stall, and for federal aviation regulators to provide stricter oversight of Part 135 carriers that are rapidly growing, undertaking increasingly complex operations, or experience an accident.

In Bering Air's case, Homendy said it was rapidly growing amid Ravn's bankruptcy and continued financial struggles. Ravn filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2020 but continued to struggle after a restructuring before shutting down last year.

The FAA, according to the NTSB's Thursday statement, failed to increase oversight of Bering Air as the company expanded.

The NTSB's recommendations didn't apply to single operators to avoid burdening the smallest operations, Homendy said.

"Aviation is the lifeline in Alaska. It's everything from food, medicine, people seeing people, work, you name it," she said. "The recommendations we issued today ... are common sense safety improvements. Hopefully they will be implemented. I hope they're taken seriously."

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