The National Transportation Safety Board has released its preliminary report on the cause of the crash of the Cessna 208B Caravan crash that took place on the outskirts of St. Marys on November 29th.

According to NTSB preliminary report, released on December 9th, the flight, destined for Mountain Village left Bethel at 5:41 pm on November 29th and flew towards Mountain Village before diverting to St Mary’s due to deteriorating weather. (ANN had initially erroneously reported that the flight had a scheduled stop at St Marys prior to traveling on to Mountain Village, this was not the case, the aircraft was scheduled to stop at St Marys after departing Mountain Village.)

The report states that the Hageland Aviation flight 1453 encountered deteriorating weather prompting it to travel towards St Marys. The Aviation Routine Weather Report showed this was true, it was reporting WSW winds of seven knots a ceiling of 300 feet and visibility of three miles eight minutes before the crash. 12 minutes after the crash, the weather report from the same location showed that the visibility had dropped to 2.5 miles.

“Witnesses on the ground at St. Mary’s reported seeing the airplane fly over the airport at low altitude, traveling in a southeasterly direction. They continued to watch the airplane travel away from the airport, until its rotating beacon disappeared. Being concerned about the direction and altitude the airplane was flying, the witnesses attempted to contact the pilot on the radio, with no response,” the report said.

The report went on to say that those same witnesses soon after “heard another aircraft on the radio report that there was an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) going off in the vicinity of St. Mary’s.”

The aircraft had crashed approximately one mile to the southeast of St Marys. According to the on-scene investigation, the aircraft had impacted a ridge on the tundra and continued on another 200 feet after the initial impact to come to rest in an open area of the snow-covered tundra.

Aboard the aircraft at the time of the crash was the pilot and nine passengers from Mountain Village. The crash initially took the lives of the pilot, Terry Hansen, and two of the passengers.

Suffering injuries herself, Melanie Coffee would contact a village Health Aide seeking help resuscitating her child, then guided by the light on the communications tower, walk towards the village, and a short time later, contact searchers, leading them to the wreckage of the aircraft. Searchers reached the crash site approximately one hour after the crash to discover the pilot and two passenger deceased. One other passenger would die later at the clinic in St Marys. The remaining six passengers were medevaced to Anchorage for treatment of their injuries.

Poor weather conditions would continue to hamper investigation efforts and the NTSB investigator and an Anchorage Flight Standards District Office inspector would not reach the crash site until December 1st.

NTSB reports that “the on-scene documentation of the wreckage was completed, and a detailed wreckage examination is pending, following recovery of the airplane.”

Killed in the crash were Terry Hansen, 68; and passengers Rose Polty, 57; Richard Polty, 65; and 5-month-old Wyatt Coffee.

Six others survived the crash. The survivors were Melanie Coffee, Pauline Johnson, Kylan Johnson, Tanya Lawrence, Garrett Moses, and Shannon Lawrence.