Jimmy Paul, tribal administrator for the Southwest Alaska village of Kipnuk, heard the call over the VHF radio at about 1:30 p.m. Thursday. Something was wrong over at the airstrip.
More than 30 villagers arrived to find that a Cessna 208 had plowed into the snow with five people on board. No one was hurt, according to Alaska State Troopers.
"I think it ran out of runway," Paul said.
It's at least the third time an aircraft has been damaged landing or taking off in Alaska villages this week, but this time something unusual happened. An FAA weather camera caught the whole thing.
The weather cam images, taken about 10 minutes apart, show the plane making what appears to be a face plant in the snow, followed by scenes of crowds and snowmachiners arriving to help.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator Josh Cawthra hoped to talk to the pilot Thursday night to learn more about what happened.
"All I really know is he was landing on Runway 33 at Kipnuk airport and for some reason exited the runway surface area," Cawthra said.
This is the first time in his career that Cawthra has seen pictures of an accident appear on a weather camera, he said.
"From what I understand ... damage focused to (the) right wing and possibly the engine and propeller, but that's just looking at the photos that we can see on the webcam."
Paul, the tribal administrator, took a look and figured the plane could fly again with repairs. Villagers drove the passengers -- including a woman and infant -- to the clinic on snowmachines just to be safe, he said.
The flight was arriving from Bethel, about 85 miles to the northeast. The flight was operated by Hageland Aviation, doing business as Era Alaska. An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the flight was operated by Era Aviation.
Read The Village, the ADN's blog about rural Alaska, at adn.com/thevillage. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adnvillage. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.
By KYLE HOPKINS
khopkins@adn.com