ANCHORAGE, Alaska — New reports show that Bering Air exceeded weight limits on flights prior to the crash of an overloaded plane near Nome last February that killed the pilot and all nine passengers.

That finding is part of a massive docket of investigative documents the National Transportation Safety Board made public Wednesday. The docket includes 78 documents totaling more than 3,400 pages.

The single-engine Bering Air Cessna Caravan crashed on Norton Sound sea ice about 30 miles southeast of Nome after leaving Unalakleet amid spells of freezing rain. Flight 445 carried several locals, Anchorage-area engineers working on a water plant, and a Mat-Su educator.

The NTSB is investigating what caused the Feb. 6, 2025, crash, the third fatal civilian aviation incident in the U.S. in less than a week and one of Alaska’s deadliest in decades.

A preliminary NTSB report released last year found the Caravan’s weight on takeoff was more than 1,000 pounds too heavy for the icy conditions it was flying into. The Federal Aviation Administration requires operators to follow such weight limitations.

The federal docket released Wednesday includes information showing that Bering Air flew the same Caravan with loads exceeding the so-called “maximum gross takeoff weight” for days leading up to the fatal crash — if not longer.

Safety board officials cautioned that the docket released this week is not the agency’s final report and does not make any probable cause findings.

“This is just a ... synopsis of all the investigative activities that have gone on for the last year,” Clint Johnson, NTSB’s Alaska chief, said Wednesday.

Investigators are analyzing information as they assemble the final factual report, Johnson said. That, along with any probable cause findings, is due out in late spring or early summer, he said.

History of overweight flights

Pilot Chad Antill’s fiancée, in an interview with NTSB investigators in late April 2025, said Antill described concerns with overweight flights.

Paige Giebel, a Minnesota resident who lived with the 34-year-old pilot every two weeks when he wasn’t in Nome, told the investigator that Antill said Bering Air ignored his concerns, according to an interview transcript.

Antill made comments about overweight planes “on a regular basis” for the year that she knew him, Giebel told the investigators, saying “they would want him to take more cargo than fuel, and he would rather have more fuel than cargo because he would always say, you can’t fly without fuel.”

Investigators reviewed the plane’s manifests for a 10-day period through the day of the crash, according to a report by the chair of the NTSB operational factors group. Out of 16 flights consisting of 35 individual legs, seven legs were over the maximum gross takeoff weight, according to the report signed by group chair Starr Blum.

“Over the seven day period sampled, six days had at least one overweight flight, or in other words 44% of the flights during that seven-day period consisted of at least one overweight flight leg,” Blum wrote.

The report also notes large discrepancies between the amount and weight of fuel logged by the pilot the day of the crash and the amounts measured by an onboard Garmin system.

Bering’s post-crash changes

Bering Air serves 32 communities in Western Alaska from hubs in Nome, Kotzebue and Unalakleet. The longstanding company provides some of the only regular passenger air service for residents who need to travel just to go shopping, get to medical appointments or participate in school activities.

Bering is already facing at least one wrongful death lawsuit, filed by the wife of an Eagle River man who died in last year’s crash. The suit claims the company was reckless when it flew an overloaded plane in dangerous icing conditions.

A representative at Bering Air’s Nome offices said the company had no comment when contacted by a reporter Wednesday.

Bering Air has made significant changes since the crash, according to a general operations manual update filed with the docket. Changes include new procedures that require a manager to sign off on departures when dispatchers flag potentially dangerous weather. Cessna Caravan flights into known icing conditions may also be delayed, canceled or switched to different planes unless a manager releases them. The changes also call for limits on total takeoff weight.

The day of the crash, the plane left Unalakleet just before 2:40 p.m. Its last signal came at about 3:20 p.m. The Caravan was at 200 feet, still miles from Nome’s airport.

Roughly six minutes earlier, investigators say, an air-traffic controller asked Antill if he could slow down slightly to “not get there too early” as the airport closed briefly for runway deicing.

The plane slowed from 152 knots to 111 knots at just under 6,000 feet, according to a filing in the docket. Within minutes, it descended to 4,000 feet before the autopilot was disengaged and the Caravan’s speed and altitude plunged.

Investigators examining the wreckage noted minor ice accumulation on some leading-edge surfaces and significant accumulation at the base of a strobe light atop the plane’s tail fin.

Antill had been a certificated commercial pilot and mechanic since 2022, according to the operational group chairman’s report. He had a total of roughly 2,500 flight hours.

Giebel described him generally as a positive person who loved to spend time with his three children, go longboarding or see live music, and collect Pokemon cards.

The day of the crash, Antill told her he wanted to get out of Unalakleet earlier — he said the weather “is looking like it’s going to get s---ty” — but Bering told him to wait for all of his passengers, according to the transcript.

Another Bering Air pilot in the area tried and failed to reach Antill after controllers lost contact.

That pilot later told investigators that, as she flew from Kotzebue toward Nome, Antill warned her on the radio “once you get over this way, just a heads up, it’s icy over here,” according to a transcript of interviews with Bering employees. The pilot said she landed at Nome with chunks of ice an inch thick or more.

“I had incredibly spiky accumulations aft of my protected surfaces and on the front nose ... around the air inlets,” the pilot said.

She said she’d never seen worse icing.

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