After he is blamed for a fatal crash that occurred when he was forced to bail out of a transport plane, pilot Gene "Loop" Gillan joins a corps of pilots who, because of their unsavory records, have established an outpost squadron in the frozen wastelands of Alaska. Even among this legion of lost flyers, Loop has difficulty and finds himself grounded when Bill Desert, the head of the commercial airlines, refuses to hire him as a pilot. At the request of mechanic "Beef" Brumley, Bill hires Loop as a "grease jockey." Although regarded as a coward by most of the flyers, Loop is befriended by Beef and by Bill's sweetheart Paula. Loop patiently awaits the arrival of Desert pilot Ralph Perry, the man who was responsible for the crash. When Perry finally arrives at the airstrip, he admits his guilt to Loop but refuses to make a public confession. Soon afterward, while flying as a mechanic for another pilot, Loop's plane is caught in a blinding blizzard, and to silence his accuser, Perry instructs the pilot to fly too low, causing the plane to crash. When Loop survives the mishap, Perry decides to steal a gold shipment and disappear. Taking off during a blizzard, Perry crashes his plane in Galewind Canyon. When a pilot spots the injured Perry, radio broadcaster Larry Barrigan arrives on the scene to report the incident, and Loop takes off to rescue Perry. After making an impossible landing, Loop rescues the injured pilot and forces him to admit over the radio that he was flying the doomed plane. His name finally cleared, Loop is reinstated as a flyer and falls in love with Paula.