Kazimierz Miernik was 68 when the sightseeing flight he booked over Denali National Park disappeared on August 4, 2018. He was one of four Polish tourists on a de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver operated by K2 Aviation, with pilot Craig Layson. The flight’s GPS stopped transmitting about 5:45 p.m., and an emergency locator transmitter alerted authorities around 6:00 p.m.

The pilot made two satellite phone calls in the hour after the impact, reporting a mountain impact with injuries and possibly two fatalities before both calls were cut off. Poor weather delayed aerial search efforts for more than a day; when a brief clearing allowed a National Park Service helicopter to inspect the area, rangers found all five bodies inside the snow-filled fuselage on a crevassed, knife-edge ridge of Thunder Mountain at nearly 11,000 feet. The site was unstable and avalanche-prone, and officials concluded recovery was not feasible. The victims remain unrecovered and entombed within the glacier.

Did anyone on the forum have contact with the passengers before that trip or additional details about the flight’s itinerary?