Coast Guard Suspends Missing Plane Search
The Coast Guard has suspended search operations a day after a Boston-bound medical transport flight went down off Nantucket, leaving a debris field swirling in the waters but no sign of the six people onboard.
The agency announced the suspension around 7 p.m. on Sunday, after “continuous searching by the Coast Guard and partner agencies.”
“We express our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones,” the agency said with the announcement.
Earlier Sunday, the Coast Guard said that searchers had found a debris field off the coast of Nantucket and were still looking for the people who were onboard.
“Our priority is to find the six personnel on that aircraft,” Rear Admiral Matt Lake, the Coast Guard Northeast District Commander, had said at a Sunday press conference.
Crews started looking for the plane and its passengers after getting a call from the Federal Aviation Administration around 2 a.m. Saturday morning, Lake said.
Airplanes, helicopters, and boats searched over 2,840 square miles of ocean and recovered debris from the medical flight about 20 miles off the coast of Nantucket. The waters in the debris field area are between 80 and 90 feet deep, Lake said.
Lake couldn’t offer any details about the six missing people, telling reporters that there were four Canadian citizens and two Bermuda citizens on the aircraft that was traveling from Bermuda to Boston.
“Because of the amount of the debris, it’s very difficult to get into the details of what’s there, but right now we’re really just focused on finding the people,” Lt. Commander Kastriot Kastrati said.
It doesn’t appear that they’ve found the plane’s black box yet, but Lake noted that the debris is “extensive.”
Capt. John McTamney said that weather conditions for the search had been, “favorable,” through Sunday morning.
“All assets on the sea and in the air have been able to effectively search the area,” he said, noting that it’s a fairly large area where they’re looking.
The rear admiral said that the Coast Guard has been in contact with the families of the passengers.
“My thoughts and those of every Coast Guard crew member are with the people on that aircraft, their families, and their loved ones during this incredibly difficult time,” Lake said.
Former U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General and aviation analysts and attorney Mary Schiavo called the debris field discovery, “sad news.”
Planes “don’t float very long,” she said. “It’s very bad news, indeed.”
Schiavo said she had a lot of confidence that the Coast Guard would find more of the plane, and from what they find, investigators will eventually be able to piece together what happened — although it may take a while.
Unlike commercial flights, a plane used for a medical flight like this would not have been required to have the same kind of blackbox or recording information onboard.
From radar records and limited communication available from the cockpit before the flight went missing, Schiavo said it’s clear they were “coming in blind,” explaining they’d lost their navigation instruments.
The plane, a Gulfstream G100 aircraft, appears to have dropped to 10,000 feet, she said, which could mean that the cabin lost pressure or there was an electrical issue, potentially something to do with heat or even a fire.
“Something happened at 24,000 feet,” Schiavo said.
Additional radar tracking showed that the plane made 20 or more “circles or triangles” in the air, opening up two possibilities, according to the former DOT inspector general.
First, she said it could show that the pilot experienced “spacial disorientation… your inner ear plays tricks on you,” and it becomes difficult to distinguish up from down.
That alone would have been difficult, but Schiavo said the plane was also coming upon bad weather, which would have made navigation without instruments or autopilot even more treacherous.
“It would be a very frightful situation,” she said.
The second possibility is that something happened to the plane that prevented it from taking pilot inputs, Schiavo said, repeating, “It’s a scary, bad situation.”
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