Latitude Air Ambulance says six aboard missing jet presumed dead

Six people aboard a Canadian air ambulance that vanished over the Atlantic early Saturday are presumed dead after the U.S. Coast Guard suspended its search off Nantucket, Massachusetts, at sunset on Sunday.

The jet was flying from Bermuda to Boston with four Canadian crew members and two Bermudian passengers, a patient and a family escort, when air traffic controllers lost contact early Saturday, the Coast Guard said. Latitude Air Ambulance, a medical transport company based in Ontario, Canada, said in a statement issued after the Coast Guard's decision that the six are presumed to have died.

Sixty-six hours of searching

The Federal Aviation Administration lost contact with the aircraft around 1 a.m. local time on Saturday and issued a Search and Rescue Alert Notice at about 1:20 a.m. ET. Rear Adm. Matthew Lake, commander of the Coast Guard's Northeast District, said the search began around 2 a.m., once the FAA notified the service.

Debris turned up Saturday night, and the Coast Guard confirmed it came from the missing Gulfstream G100. The field sits about 20 miles south of Nantucket, in water roughly 80 to 90 feet deep, and crews searched through the night while the Nantucket harbormaster and police combed the island's south shore.

Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod sent an HC-144 Ocean Sentry, an HC-130 Hercules and an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter. A 47-foot motor lifeboat crew from Station Brant Point and the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter William Sparling, a Boston-based fast response cutter, joined the effort, along with two HH-60 helicopter crews and an HC-130 from the New York Air National Guard's 106th Rescue Wing.

Lt. Commander Kastriot Kastrati, the search and rescue mission coordinator, said at a Sunday briefing that the amount of debris made it difficult to identify the components and that crews were focused on finding the people aboard. "The debris that we have recovered, we've safeguarded and kept for future investigative efforts," he said.

The decision to stop

The Coast Guard suspended the search at sunset on Sunday after approximately 66 hours of continuous operations covering 4,445 miles. At a briefing earlier that day, Lake had put the effort at about 2,840 square miles over 53 hours and said the priority was to locate the six people on the aircraft.

Suspending a search is not an easy decision. We express our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones affected by the tragedy and our gratitude for our partner agencies who helped support search efforts.

Latitude said the four members of its team, the patient and the patient's family escort aboard the flight, which used the call sign Heartbeat 104, are presumed to have died. Peter Byl, the company's president, described the accident as "an unimaginable loss for our Latitude family and for everyone who loved the six people aboard Heartbeat 104."

The National Transportation Safety Board told CBS News on Sunday that it was monitoring the situation, and told Fox News Digital that it was gathering information and declined to provide an update. Latitude said it would cooperate with the NTSB, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and other authorities. The Coast Guard said any investigation into the cause would be coordinated by the appropriate investigative authorities.

Massport, which runs Boston Logan International Airport, confirmed that the aircraft, due to land at about 1:30 a.m. local time after a flight Latitude said should have taken about two hours, never arrived.

The last radio calls

Nantucket Memorial Airport said the pilot declared an emergency before contact was lost. The airport's manager, Preston Harimon, said the details of the incident remained unconfirmed and that federal authorities would comment on the circumstances. Operations at the airport continued as normal.

During an exchange, air traffic control asked the pilot, "You're coming in blind?" NPR reported. The jet was in contact with New York controllers when it declared the emergency, according to air traffic audio obtained by ABC News.

The controller had trouble hearing the crew and asked them to repeat their messages, including their altitude, several times. When the air ambulance stopped responding, the controller asked a nearby Ethiopian Airlines jet to try to reach it by radio. There was still no response.

A fire rescue dispatcher told emergency crews to prepare for the plane's arrival, saying it was 15 minutes away, was suffering from electrical issues and had lost radio and radar, according to NPR, which cited dispatch audio posted on Broadcastify.

Canada and Bermuda respond

Canada's foreign policy department said it was "deeply concerned by the disappearance" of the plane and thanked the U.S. Coast Guard for its efforts. Steve MacKinnon, Canada's minister of transport, said his thoughts were with everyone aboard and their families, loved ones and colleagues. Bermuda's premier, David Burt, said during the search that the government had contacted the family and U.S. search and rescue authorities.

The flight and the aircraft

Bermuda Skyport Corporation, which runs L.F. Wade International Airport, said the Canadian-registered air ambulance left for Boston at approximately 12:41 a.m. on Saturday with four crew members and two passengers. FlightAware data put the departure at 11:41 p.m. ET on Friday. Latitude said the trip was supposed to take about two hours.

The jet dropped from 24,000 feet to about 11,000 feet in two to three minutes shortly after 1 a.m., FlightAware data show, and was tracked for several more minutes before it disappeared.

Officials believe the plane rapidly descended 7,500 feet before hitting the water, ABC News reported, citing a person with knowledge of the investigation.

The aircraft was registered in Canada as C-GRJP. It was built in Israel in 1996, and Latitude flies ten aircraft, four of them Gulfstream G100s. The company's website says its air ambulances carry two pilots and a medical team with a stretcher and full ICU equipment, and that it has run thousands of missions since 2009, claiming "a flawless safety record."

What remains unknown

Investigators have not established what caused the crash. Latitude said determining the circumstances and cause "is a careful and methodical process" and that it would not speculate. Clarence Togeretz, the company's director of flight operations, confirmed on Saturday that the aircraft was missing and that Latitude had contacted search and rescue teams and the authorities.

No black box had been recovered when Lake briefed reporters on Sunday, and officials were coordinating with local authorities to run sonar along the seabed near the debris field.

Robert Katz, a commercial pilot of 44 years, told NBC 10 that a drop of more than 4,000 feet a minute is not a normal rate of descent for any aircraft. Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general at the U.S. Department of Transportation, said in analysis shared with Fox News Digital that the jet faced a critical in-flight safety problem followed almost immediately by a weather event and an 11,000-foot plunge.

The search ended without any of the six being found. The Coast Guard did not say whether it would resume, and no date has been given for recovering the wreckage from the seabed.