Two brothers were unharmed after their plane crashed on Nunivak Island on Sept. 7. The brothers live in Bethel, and were leaving the island in a private plane loaded with just-harvested muskox meat.
The four-seater aircraft crashed shortly after taking off near Cape Corwin, about 50 miles south of the community of Mekoryuk. At that time the Mekoryuk airport recorded light rain and fog, with less than 3 miles of visibility and wind gusts up to 36 miles per hour.
The brothers contacted Alaska State Troopers at 8:22 p.m. on Sept. 7 through an inReach satellite equipped with GPS. They reported no injuries and said that they had enough survival gear to make it through the night until help arrived. Because the hunters were unharmed and had the proper equipment, troopers made contact with the Anchorage Rescue Coordinator Center but did not deploy military aircraft to the scene, according to Trooper Scott Corino.
The brothers waited out the night, and chartered a flight with God’s Country Aviation in Bethel to bring them home the next day. They returned safely to Bethel around 1 p.m. the next day, on Sunday, Sept. 8.
Anna Rose MacArthur is a reporter at KYUK in Bethel.
