Six Presumed Dead After Medical Transport Jet Goes Missing Off Nantucket on Bermuda-to-Boston Flight

Six people aboard a medical transport jet that went missing on Saturday while flying from Bermuda to Boston are presumed dead, the aircraft’s operator said, after the US Coast Guard suspended its search off Nantucket, Massachusetts, on Sunday evening, a day after debris from the plane was found in the water.

Latitude Air Ambulance, the Canada-based provider that operated the flight, said the four members of its crew, a patient and the patient’s family escort were aboard the aircraft, known as Heartbeat 104. The company said it now had to face the “heartbreaking reality” that all six were presumed to have died, and added that its thoughts were with the families, loved ones, friends and colleagues of those on board. Its president, Peter Byl, called it an unimaginable loss for the Latitude family and for everyone who loved the six people aboard. Officials said four of those on board were Canadian and two were Bermudian nationals. Canada’s transport minister, Steve MacKinnon, wrote on X on Saturday that four Canadians were among the six people on the plane. The Coast Guard said next of kin have been notified.

The aircraft, a Gulfstream G-100, took off from L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda just after 12:40 a.m. on Saturday, according to CNN. The Federal Aviation Administration lost contact with it just after 1 a.m. local time, BBC reported, while a company representative told CNN that Latitude lost contact at around 1:30 a.m. and notified the Coast Guard after the plane failed to land on schedule. The Coast Guard said the FAA alerted it to the missing aircraft at roughly 2 a.m., which is when a search and rescue operation was launched. The accounts differ slightly on timing, and investigators are likely to establish a precise timeline from air traffic control and radar records.

Radio and dispatch reports cited by the Boston Globe, and reproduced in BBC coverage, suggest the crew may have been in trouble before contact was lost. An area fire dispatcher asked emergency crews just after 1 a.m. EDT to prepare to meet a plane reported to have an electrical problem, and later said the aircraft had lost radio and radar. In the air traffic control exchange, the controller told the pilot that his transmission was coming in weak and that the response could not be heard, and asked whether he was declaring an emergency. The controller later confirmed that the pilot had declared one. What caused the electrical problem, and whether it led to the crash, has not been established, and neither the operator nor the authorities have offered an explanation.

The Coast Guard searched through the night, and officials found a debris field that they confirmed was associated with the missing aircraft off the coast of Nantucket, an island about 30 miles south of Cape Cod. According to CBS News, the search, which was led by the Coast Guard’s Northeast District, spanned 4,445 miles before it was suspended. Coast Guard boats and aircraft took part in the effort, which continued after the debris was located as crews looked for any survivors. The decision to suspend the search came on Sunday evening, and shortly afterward Latitude issued its statement that all those aboard were presumed dead.

The discovery of debris on Saturday gave an early indication of how the flight ended, even though the search for survivors continued for roughly another day. The reports reviewed do not say how much wreckage has been found, where the main body of the aircraft lies, or how deep the water is at the site. Those details will affect how much of the plane can be recovered and how quickly investigators can examine it, and they are among the main unknowns as the recovery effort begins.

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Latitude said it would work with the US National Transportation Safety Board, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and other authorities on recovery efforts and on the investigation into why the plane crashed. Both agencies have a role because the operator is Canadian, the aircraft was lost in US waters, and most of those on board were Canadian. Their work is expected to focus on the electrical problem reported shortly after 1 a.m., the loss of radio and radar contact, and the pilot’s declared emergency, along with the aircraft’s maintenance history and the weather at the time. The NTSB typically publishes a preliminary report within weeks of a crash, though a final determination of the cause can take much longer.

Former FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko, speaking to CNN, explained that in addition to conducting grid searches and retracing a missing aircraft’s expected path, the Coast Guard can track a plane through its Emergency Locator Transmitter, which automatically sends a distress signal after a crash. The reports reviewed do not say whether such a signal was received in this case, a point that investigators will likely examine as they reconstruct the plane’s final minutes.

Air ambulance flights carry patients who need care while travelling between hospitals, and crews often operate at night, when there is little margin if a problem arises in flight. In this case, the patient was travelling with a family escort, and the crew of four made up the rest of the people aboard. The reports reviewed do not name any of the six, and Latitude has not said which hospital the patient was bound for in Boston or what condition required the transfer. Those details are likely to emerge as the families are identified publicly.

For Latitude, the immediate priority is supporting the families and its own staff while investigators begin their work. For the communities in Bermuda and Canada that lost people on the flight, the crash has brought a swift end to what began as a routine overnight transfer, and one that investigators now say ended in the Atlantic only hours after takeoff, within reach of the Massachusetts coast.