Bermuda police name Bean and Lottimore among the six on the missing medical jet

Bermuda Police on Monday named the two Bermudians aboard the medical jet that disappeared on a flight from Bermuda to Boston early Saturday. They are Marilyn Lavonne Bean, 66, and her son, Sergio Wayne Lottimore, 41. The US Coast Guard then named the four Canadians on the same aircraft: Philip Gregory Childerhose, Thomas Henry Farquhar, Sarah Jane Paton and Jolene Beth Weir. Police did not say why Bean and Lottimore were on the flight.

The Coast Guard said searchers had covered more than 4,400 square miles across 66 hours before the search was suspended on Sunday evening. A debris field was found off Nantucket. The people aboard were not found in it. Latitude Air Ambulance, which operated the flight as Heartbeat 104, said the four members of its team, the patient, and the patient's family escort are presumed to have died. That accounting matches the six names now public: four Canadians with the company, and a Bermudian patient with a family escort.

The flight record

The Federal Aviation Administration told the Coast Guard at about 2 a.m. Saturday that it had lost contact with a Gulfstream G100 carrying six people over the Atlantic. The aircraft had left L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda at 11:41 p.m. Friday for the roughly 800-mile leg to Boston, an airport spokesperson, Ciara Eve, said. Tracking data described a sharp drop from about 24,000 feet after a last exchange with air traffic control. There was no further response from the cockpit.

The company's statement, issued once authorities ended the active search, is the point at which a missing-aircraft case became a presumed fatal accident. Latitude did not, in that statement, give a cause. The Coast Guard's Matthew Lake had said suspending a search is not an easy decision. Bermuda premier David Burt had earlier said the government was praying the six would be found safe. The naming on Monday is the step that follows that hope being set aside.

Bean and Lottimore are the only two of the six whose ages are in the police statement. The Coast Guard's list of Canadians does not, in the copy available on Monday, include ages or roles. Latitude's split, four crew and two from the patient's side, assigns the roles without assigning each Canadian name to a seat. Families have been notified, authorities said.

What the debris does and does not settle

A debris field about 20 miles off Nantucket is evidence that the aircraft, or parts of it, reached the water in that area. It is not a wreckage map, and it did not produce the people aboard. Sonar was the next tool searchers described over the weekend. The suspension means that tool is no longer being used in an active rescue. A later recovery, if one is attempted, would be a different operation, aimed at recorders and remains rather than survivors.

For Bermuda, two names on a short flight to Boston are a local loss as well as an aviation case. Bean was 66. Her son was 41. The police statement does not describe an illness, a hospital transfer, or a booking. The aircraft type, a Gulfstream used as an air ambulance, and the company's own description of a patient and an escort, are the basis for reading Bean as the patient and Lottimore as the escort. That reading fits the numbers. It is not a sentence the police have published.

The six names close the question the first reports left open. They do not close the question of why the jet left 24,000 feet, or why the radio stopped. Those answers sit with the recorder, if it is found, and with whatever Latitude and the FAA put on paper next. Until then the public record is a departure at 11:41 p.m. Friday, a lost contact before dawn Saturday, debris off Nantucket, a suspended search, and six people named on Monday.