Coast Guard ends the Nantucket search as Latitude presumes six dead

The US Coast Guard suspended the search on Sunday evening for a medical jet that left Bermuda for Boston early Saturday with six people aboard. Latitude Air Ambulance said the six are presumed dead.

The aircraft was a Gulfstream G100, call sign Heartbeat 104, operated by the Canada-based company. It departed L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda just after 12:40 a.m. and was due at Boston Logan around 1:12 a.m. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a search-and-rescue alert at about 1:20 a.m. after contact was lost. FlightAware data showed the jet at 24,000 feet for more than an hour, then down 13,000 feet in two minutes. Debris was later found off Nantucket, about 30 miles south of Cape Cod.

Latitude's statement on Sunday night, carried by Reuters, said that given what authorities had shared, and with the search-and-rescue phase over, the company had to face the fact that four members of its team, the patient, and the patient's family escort are presumed to have died. The Coast Guard said the two pilots and two medical staff are Canadian. The patient and the escort are Bermudian. Next of kin have been notified.

The search had run from Saturday morning into Sunday evening. Suspending it is a formal step, not a guess. The Coast Guard ends an active search when the probability of finding anyone alive has fallen below the threshold it uses for cold water, time, and the debris already in hand. Latitude's word, presumed, tracks that step. It is not a medical examiner's finding. No wreckage recovery deep enough to identify remains had been announced when the company spoke.

A Gulfstream G100 is a small business jet, built in the 1990s, used here as an air ambulance. Latitude has had this aircraft on the Canadian register since 2018. It was built in 1996. The flight was a patient transfer, not a scheduled airline sector, which is why the passenger list is four crew plus a patient and one relative rather than a cabin of ticket holders. The drop FlightAware recorded, 13,000 feet in two minutes from the mid-20s, is a loss of controlled flight, not a diversion. The agency has not published a cause.

Nantucket water in early October is cold enough that survival time after a ditching is measured in hours, not days. By Sunday evening the clock had run past that window, and debris was already on the surface. That is the factual basis for the suspension. It does not locate the fuselage. A sonar search of the seabed, if one follows, is a recovery, not a rescue, and the Coast Guard did not announce one in the Sunday statement.

The open file is now Canadian and Bermudian as well as American. The operator is Canadian, four of the dead are Canadian, two are Bermudian, and the water is off Massachusetts. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada and the US National Transportation Safety Board both have a claim on the recorder if it is found. Neither has said the recorder has been located. Until it is, the public record is the FlightAware trace, the debris field off Nantucket, a suspended search, and a company statement that six people are presumed dead.