Researches found debris from a medical transport plane that was carrying six people when it vanished over the Atlantic early on Saturday during a flight from Bermuda to Boston, the US Coast Guard said. A statement from the Coast Guard issued on Saturday evening said crews searching off the coast of the Massachusetts island Nantucket “located a debris field confirmed to be from the aircraft”, described as an air ambulance. Six passengers and crew on board were still unaccounted for at the time of the debris field’s discovery, a spokesperson for the Coast Guard said.
Boats, planes and helicopters were launched after flight controllers lost contact with the air ambulance. Air traffic controllers had difficulty communicating with the flight in its final moments. Is that what you said?” a controller asked the pilot at about 12.46am.
The air ambulance – a Gulfstream G100 – took off from Bermuda late on Saturday, carrying a patient, a family member and a four-person crew. The patient and family member were identified as citizens of Bermuda. The crew was identified as Canadian citizens, though the names of the people on board the flight were not immediately released.
As it neared Nantucket, the plane reported electrical failures, according to radio transmissions. Data from the website FlightAware shows the plane descended thousands of feet within three minutes and disappeared from radar shortly after at about 1am local time. The Coast Guard said on Saturday evening that its William Sparling cutter boat would continue searching for those onboard the air ambulance through the night.
The agency reported that its crews searched roughtly 1,644 sq miles (4,258 sq km) for the aircraft in about 27 hours.
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