Adding on to a busy week of aeronautic trouble, a small plane carrying ten passengers was reported as missing near Nome, Alaska, on the evening of February 7th.

The aircraft, a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, was en route to Nome from the small town of Unalakleet, last reporting data at 3:16 p.m. when it was reported as flying over the Norton Sound.

White Mountain fire chief Jack Adams told Alaska News that search and rescue teams were deployed. However, due to the unsafe nature of the ice in the Bering Strait this time of year, the teams are deployed on snowmobiles and will need to take a longer, on-land route to the area where the plane is estimated to be if it were to have crashed.

Adams knows that this is not ideal and stresses the importance of perseverance in the search and rescue team.

“They’re prepared to be out all night, they will search here until they find them or somebody else finds them,” Adams told Alaska News. “If they don’t find anything, we’ll probably rally another crew to go and help”.

Adams added that the plane landing in the water would be the “worst case scenario”, expressing his hope that the plane is on dry land.

The weather in Alaska this time of year is more rugged than how it is usually. Wind speed can near the triple digits and temperatures can reach as low as 40 below zero. This also does not account for the snow and ice, both of which make flying a 737, let alone a Cessna, extremely difficult.

Both the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Coast Guard are involved in the search, with FAA weather reports showing that the 208B Grand Caravan would have been flying in whiteout conditions.

As of 12:40 a.m. on Feb 7, there have been no reports of locating the plane.