Time was of the essence as the ice floe, about 54km out to sea near Nome, Alaska, was made of slushy ice and the weather was predicted to turn foul on Sunday, whipping up snow and 72km/h winds, officials said on Saturday night.
Recovery of the victims from the small commuter aircraft was made by a joint effort of the US Coast Guard, US Air Force and other agencies.
Meanwhile, a crew of nine investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) arrived in Anchorage, Alaska, on Saturday to find out why it crashed.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the Cessna carrying nine passengers and one pilot was lost from radar contact about 3:30pm local time on Thursday over the Bering Sea as it headed from Unalakleet, Alaska, to an airfield in Nome, about 160km south of the Arctic Circle.
The Coast Guard found the wreckage late on Friday on an ice floe drifting about eight kilometres a day at sea, officials said.
"The priority is victim recovery. Then we will recover the wreckage," Homendy said at a press conference earlier on Saturday.
Officials had said they would use Black Hawk helicopters to try to lift the wreckage off the ice.
She also expressed her "deepest condolences" to the victims' families and friends.
"Please know that we will work diligently to determine how this happened," she said, adding, "It must be extremely heartbreaking for the families".
The incident comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of air safety in the United States.
NTSB investigators are probing two deadly crashes in recent days: the midair collision of a passenger jet and US Army Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, DC, that killed 67 people, and a medical jet crash in Philadelphia that killed seven.
