Crews find ‘debris field’ from 6-person medical flight missing over the Atlantic en route to Boston
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Searchers found a “debris field” off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, from an air ambulance that was carrying six people when it vanished over the Atlantic on Saturday during a flight from Bermuda to Boston, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
Four Canadians and two Bermudian nationals were aboard, and their next of kin were notified as the search continued, the Coast Guard said in a statement. It added that one of its cutters would keep searching the water overnight and into Sunday.
According to the Coast Guard, the Federal Aviation Administration reported that the Gulfstream G100 lost contact very early Saturday morning. Air traffic audio indicates that it may have been “coming in blind” when a storm loomed ahead shortly before it vanished.
The pilot reported electrical problems and declared an emergency as the jet approached the coast, according to air traffic control audio posted by LiveATC.net. “Roger, you said you’re coming in blind. Is that what you said?” a controller can be heard asking the pilot.
That makes Mary Schiavo, who is a former Inspector General of the Transportation Department, think the plane may have lost its navigational instruments just as a storm moved across its path on radar. The plane also descended sharply from its cruising altitude of around 24,000 feet to around 10,000 feet, according to preliminary data from flight tracking site FlightRadar24.
“Something bad happened with this big drop, and they flew into this big storm. It’s a terrible place to have a loss of your instruments and be flying blind,” said Schiavo, who is an aviation attorney. “It’s very easy to get disoriented and not know if you’re turning, climbing, descending, etc.”
The Canadian-registered air ambulance jet had four crew members and two passengers aboard when it departed Bermuda’s L.F. Wade International Airport for the nighttime flight to Massachusetts, according to a statement from the Bermuda airport’s operator, Skyport.
Transport Canada was closely monitoring and working with authorities on search and rescue efforts, the country’s Minister of Transport Steven MacKinnon said on the social platform X.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was gathering information about the situation, but it did not say immediately if it would investigate.
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Associated Press reporter Laura Turbay in Little Rock, Arkansas, a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative, contributed to this report. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.