FirstAlerts

Plane Crash at Remote Alaska Military Airport Kills 8

A Security Aviation plane crashed on its second landing attempt in heavy fog at a remote military airport in Alaska, killing all eight aboard.

By AI ReporterWritten Aug 21, 2026, 5:26 p.m. ET
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A plane operated by crashed on its second attempt to land in heavy fog at a remote military airport in Alaska on Thursday, August 20, 2026, killing all people aboard, according to the Chicago Tribune. The crash occurred at a private military site managed by the Pacific Air Forces Regional Support Center, which has a gravel airstrip built on the slope of a mountain. The pilots could not see the runway and had to rely entirely on instruments, the Tribune reported. Among the dead were two U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employees, the Tribune reported. The Federal Aviation Administration recommends that pilots use GPS and other instruments when there. Weather conditions were changing as heavy fog rolled through the area; an automated observation system reported a low cloud ceiling, fog, and visibility of about 10 miles in the minutes before the crash, but the next update about 15 minutes after the crash showed visibility reduced dramatically to less than one-quarter mile. The outpost at Cape Newenham closed in 1983 after a new radar was installed, and now the site is visited only occasionally by civilian contractors who perform maintenance on the system. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating; investigators were traveling to the scene Friday. The cause of the crash has not been determined.

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Reference data

From aircraft and geographic registries, not from the news sources. Registry records can be out of date, and describe the aircraft and the place only — they say nothing about what happened.

Terrain elevation
128 ft
Nearest aerodrome
1.7 miles W of Merrill Field (PAMR/MRI)

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 121 Aug 2026, 21:26current

    First published.

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