On July 28, 2006, a 39-year-old man named Ricky Posusta, along with two other men, Ralph Aiken and Ian Beer, boarded a blue and white Aero Commander four-seat plane in Kenai, Alaska, for a 65-mile flight to Anchorage. All three men were experienced pilots. The aircraft, owned by Commander Northwest, was scheduled for what was intended to be a local area familiarization flight. The men were also reportedly working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, identifying birds. The plane had already made several trips between Kenai and Anchorage that day. They departed from the Kenai area, flew northeast to the coastline, and proceeded along the north shore of the Kenai Peninsula and Cook Inlet.
The flight did not have a filed flight plan, and no signal from an emergency locator transmitter was detected. The last known contact with the propeller-driven plane was at approximately 8:30 p.m. Radar and satellite tracking data indicated the plane's last position was about three miles offshore, between Moose Point and Point Possession in the Gompertz Channel of Cook Inlet, roughly 10 to 15 miles southwest of Anchorage. The data from a satellite positioning device on the aircraft, which updated every two minutes, showed the plane flying low and slow along the peninsula's coast before turning toward the center of the inlet. The final data point recorded the plane's altitude at 495 feet. Shortly after this, at approximately 8:37 p.m., the Aero Commander is presumed to have crashed.
An extensive search was launched by the Civil Air Patrol, Alaska State Troopers, and the Coast Guard, combing the waters of Cook Inlet and the rugged terrain between Kenai and Anchorage. The search was hampered by the vast and challenging environment, described by one official as looking for 'a needle in a haystack.' The area of the presumed crash site is known for its extreme tides, strong currents, and poor visibility due to high glacial silt content. Despite the intensive efforts of search and rescue teams, and a report from a fishing vessel that may have seen the plane in the area where it was last heard from, no wreckage of the aircraft or any sign of the three men has ever been found. The National Transportation Safety Board's final report on the incident states that the airplane is presumed to have been destroyed, with the cause of the accident listed as undetermined due to the fact that neither the airplane nor its occupants have been located. The case remains one of Alaska's many unsolved aviation mysteries, a heartbreaking example of how quickly aircraft can vanish without a trace in the state's vast and unforgiving wilderness.
Last Seen: Jul 28, 2006
