Coast Guard briefing on the search for Bering Air plane

In a press briefing at noon put on by the Coast Guard, Assistant Chief of the Office of Incident Management Benjamin McIntyre-Coble said there has been an item of interest identified in the search area.

A Coast Guard MH-60 helicopter is searching at that location. “What that is, and what that might shake out to be, and what the status of the people who may or may not be there is, I can't speculate to at this time,” McIntyre said.

The Coast Guard said this is an active search and rescue case. Names of passengers and the pilot will not be released at this time. 

Currently a Coast Guard C-130 plane is flying over the area conducting along with a National Guard Black Hawk helicopter. 

The Bering Air plane's Emergency Locating Transmitter has not transmitted. Every plane carries Emergency Locating Transmitter or ELT, if the device is exposed to seawater, it sends a message back to the USCG via satellite informing them of an aircraft in distress. The Coast Guard received no notification and they are unsure as to why.  

Radar forensics show the aircraft moving across Norton Sound then a rapid loss of altitude for the plane, and then a corresponding rapid loss and speed,  McIntyre-Coble said.

The Coast Guard is utilizing forward looking infrared systems to detect temperature changes on the water surface, high optical or high resolution optical cameras. “Something that we're doing at the very, very much proceeding this, this call is deploying something called a self locating data marker brewing, which is an object that will go into the water, and it could potentially help us understand the flow of the water and the flow of the ice relative to the oceans currents.”

The National Transportation Safety Board is on scene, taking a backseat right now and gathering information to feed into the investigation on what happened.