The U.S. Coast Guard has called off its search for six people who were aboard a medical transport jet that vanished over the Atlantic early Saturday while flying from Bermuda to Boston, after crews found a field of wreckage roughly 20 miles off Nantucket, Massachusetts.
The search was suspended at sunset Sunday after about 66 hours, the Coast Guard said. Later Sunday, the jet’s operator, Latitude Air Ambulance of Hamilton, Ontario, said its four crew members, the patient they were transporting and the patient’s family escort are presumed dead, adding that the company had to “face the heartbreaking reality” of the loss.
“Suspending a search is not an easy decision,” Rear Adm. Matthew Lake, who commands the Coast Guard’s Northeast District, said in a statement Sunday.
The aircraft, a twin-engine Gulfstream G100 flying as Heartbeat 104, left L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda shortly before midnight Friday, at about 11:40 p.m. Eastern time, according to FlightAware data cited by CBS News. It was scheduled to land at Boston’s Logan airport around 1:30 a.m.
A sudden descent
At about 1 a.m. Saturday, flight-tracking data show the jet falling from roughly 24,000 feet to about 11,000 feet, NBC News and Fox News reported, citing FlightAware. Fox News said the drop took about three minutes. The Federal Aviation Administration told Fox News it issued a search-and-rescue alert at about 1:20 a.m., and the Coast Guard said the FAA notified it around 2 a.m. that contact with the jet had been lost.
As the jet neared the coast, the pilot reported electrical problems in air traffic control recordings posted on LiveATC.net, NBC Boston reported. In audio obtained by NBC News, a controller asks the crew whether it is declaring an emergency and “coming in blind.”
Authorities have not said what caused the aircraft to go down and have declined to speculate. Latitude said it would not speculate either.
Inside the search
Coast Guard and partner crews searched 4,445 miles over roughly 66 hours, the agency said. Its assets included the fast response cutter William Sparling, a 47-foot motor lifeboat, an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, and HC-144 Ocean Sentry and HC-130 Hercules airplanes, CBS News reported. Massachusetts authorities and an air rescue wing of the New York National Guard also took part, Lake told reporters Sunday.
Lake said the debris lay in roughly 80 to 90 feet of water and that searchers had found no sign of the plane’s flight recorder, though he noted the debris field was extensive. Lt. Cmdr. Kastriot Kastrati, who coordinated the search, said at a briefing that the recovered pieces had not yet been identified and were being kept for investigators, CBS News reported.
Officials have not released the names of those aboard, and the Coast Guard said next of kin had been notified. The two pilots and two medical workers were Canadian, and the patient and escort were from Bermuda, according to authorities and the company. Lake declined to give names or ages, citing respect for the families.
Latitude flies sick and injured patients home from abroad. A typical mission carries two pilots plus two medical staff, according to the company’s website, as cited by NBC News. “This is an unimaginable loss for our Latitude family and for everyone who loved the six people aboard Heartbeat 104,” company President Peter Byl said in the statement.
What’s next
The Coast Guard said “appropriate investigative authorities” would coordinate the investigation into what brought the jet down. Latitude said it would cooperate fully with the National Transportation Safety Board and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. The NTSB told CBS News on Sunday that it was monitoring the situation.
Lake said investigators would likely try to locate the flight recorder, and the Coast Guard has said it is working with Massachusetts authorities to bring in sonar-equipped vessels to scan the seafloor near the debris field.
