The United States Coast Guard confirmed on Sunday the discovery of a debris field about 20 miles south of Nantucket, Massachusetts, belonging to the missing medical aircraft with six people on board that was covering the route between the Bermuda Islands and Boston.
The aircraft, a Canadian-registered Gulfstream G100 C-GRJP, was operated by Latitude Air Ambulance, a company specialized in medical evacuations. On board were four Canadians and two Bermudian citizens: four crew members, one patient, and a family member accompanying, as confirmed by the company itself and reported by Infobae.
The flight departed from L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda on Friday at 11:41 PM local time, headed for Logan International Airport in Boston, where it was scheduled to land at 1:30 AM on Saturday.
Less than two hours after takeoff, FlightAware's platform logs detected a sudden descent: the aircraft dropped from about 7,000 meters in altitude to 3,300 meters within minutes, after which it disappeared from radar. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a search and rescue alert at 1:20 a.m.
Mary Schiavo, former Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Transportation and an aviation law expert, provided a technical analysis of the incident: "Something went wrong with that significant drop, and they flew into a severe storm. It's a terrible place to lose instruments and fly blind." She added that in those conditions, "it's very easy to become disoriented and not know whether you're turning, ascending, descending, etc.," she elaborated in the report.
The search operation, various media outlets have reported, covered more than four square kilometers off the coast of Nantucket for at least 27 consecutive hours. The Coast Guard deployed HC-144 Ocean Sentry and HC-130 Hercules aircraft, an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, a rescue patrol boat, and the fast response vessel William Sparling, with no survivors confirmed by the time the information was available.
The case generated reactions at the international level. The Premier of Bermuda, David Burt, confirmed that the government had already contacted the families of the six occupants and stated: "We pray that the six individuals will be found alive and we thank the ongoing efforts of the search and rescue teams," notes Europa Press, as cited by La Jornada.
On his part, Canada's Transport Minister, Steve MacKinnon, expressed that his thoughts were "with all the passengers on board, as well as their families, loved ones, and colleagues during this very difficult time," and confirmed the active cooperation of Canadian authorities in the investigation, the media reports.
The event takes place in a region of the North Atlantic near the so-called Bermuda Triangle, an area historically associated with the disappearances of aircraft and vessels. However, some experts point out that this area does not have an unusually high accident rate compared to other regions with comparable traffic, and that historical incidents have conventional explanations: mechanical failures, navigation errors, and adverse weather conditions.
The incident adds to recent air tragedies in the region. At the beginning of September, a Piper PA-34 Seneca plane with four people on board —an elderly couple and their two grandchildren— disappeared on its route from the Bahamas to Miami, with no survivors found.
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