A search has been suspended for the medevac plane that disappeared over Southeast Alaska with three crew members on board.
At 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard called off the search for the Guardian Flight air ambulance that was due to land in Kake on Tuesday night but never arrived.
Coast Guard conducted aerial and maritime searches for 63 hours over the course of three days. They continued those efforts late into Thursday afternoon with the cutters Anacapa and Bailey Barco, as well as crews from Air Station Sitka and Air Station Kodiak, Search and Rescue teams from Kake and surrounding communities, and volunteers. Together, they scoured 240 square nautical miles in an area 20 miles west of Kake.
On Wednesday afternoon, a few pieces of floating debris were found. Guardian Flight’s operations chief Randy Lyman released a statement saying the pieces appeared to belong to the missing Beechcraft turboprop plane. As of Thursday afternoon, the National Transportation Safety Board was standing by to examine the suspected wreckage.
Chief Charly Hengen, public affairs specialist for the Coast Guard, confirmed that the debris found on Wednesday appeared to be from the Guardian Flight, but said that no other debris was found over the course of their three-day effort. That was one of several factors that led the Coast Guard to call off the search.
“I think the weather was going to become pretty severe over the next few days,” said Hengen. “That could have been taken into consideration. The extensive amount of time and the saturation of the search area that we did. Plus they were not able to locate any other debris.”
Guardian Flight released the names of the three Juneau-based crew: 63-year old pilot Patrick Coyle, 30-year old flight nurse Stacie Rae Morse and 43-year-old flight paramedic Margaret Langston.
The trio had left Anchorage and were bound for Kake to medevac a patient from the community’s clinic. Their plane never arrived and signals from its electronic locating transmitter haven’t been detected. The patient was later medevaced by another carrier.
Guardian’s operations in Alaska remained suspended Thursday afternoon pending more information on its missing plane and crew. Guardian is one of three air ambulances operating in Southeast Alaska.
