Coast Guard Suspends Search for 6 Aboard Medical Jet After 66 Hours, Confirms No Black Box Found

The debris field confirmed Saturday night off Nantucket turned out to be the last piece of hope. By Sunday at sunset, the U.S. Coast Guard suspended its search for the six people aboard the medical evacuation jet that disappeared en route from Bermuda to Boston.

Rear Adm. Matthew Lake, commander of the Coast Guard's Northeast District, made the call after crews spent 66 hours scouring more than 4,445 square miles of ocean, according to the Coast Guard and reporting from CBS News and NBC News. "Suspending a search is not an easy decision," Lake said in a statement. "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."

Four Canadians and two Bermudian nationals were aboard the Canadian-registered Gulfstream G100, tail number C-GRJP, operated by Latitude Air Ambulance of Ontario, Canada, according to Fox News and the Daily Wire. The crew included two pilots and two medical workers. A source familiar with the matter told NBC News the two Bermudian nationals were a patient and the patient's son.

Next of kin for all six have been notified, the Coast Guard said.

What searchers found, and didn't

The jet left Bermuda's L.F. Wade International Airport at 11:41 p.m. Friday and was due in Boston around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, per FlightAware data cited by multiple outlets. The FAA lost contact with the aircraft roughly 1:45 hours into the flight and issued a Search and Rescue Alert Notice around 1:20 a.m., the agency confirmed to CBS News and the Epoch Times.

FlightRadar24 data showed the plane dropping sharply from about 24,000 feet to roughly 10,000 to 11,000 feet before contact was lost. Crews later found a debris field about 20 miles off Nantucket, in water 80 to 90 feet deep, according to Coast Guard Northeast District Capt. John McTamney, speaking to PBS.

Kastriot Kastrati, the Coast Guard's search and rescue mission coordinator, told reporters Sunday that officials still haven't identified the recovered debris. Officials are still working to identify the components. He added that the material has been safeguarded for investigators. Lake separately said there is "no indications that we found a black box," and cautioned that locating one would be difficult given the nature of the wreckage, according to the Epoch Times.

The Coast Guard had planned to bring in a sonar-equipped craft to scan the seabed in coordination with Massachusetts authorities, a step officials said was underway before the search was formally suspended.

The storm and the radio call

Air traffic control audio posted by LiveATC.net, reviewed by PBS and the Associated Press, captured a controller asking the pilot, "Roger, you said you're coming in blind. Is that what you said?" The pilot had reported electrical problems and declared an emergency as the jet neared the coast, where a storm was tracking across its path.

Mary Schiavo, a former Department of Transportation inspector general and now an aviation attorney, told the AP and PBS that the sharp altitude drop combined with the storm suggests the crew may have lost navigational instruments at the worst possible moment. "Something bad happened with this big drop, and they flew into this big storm," Schiavo said. "It's very easy to get disoriented and not know if you're turning, climbing, descending, etc."

Coast Guard officials have repeatedly declined to speculate on a cause. "I don't want to speculate on what caused the aircraft to have this incident," Lake told reporters Sunday morning, per the Epoch Times. "That's up to the investigative efforts later."

Where the investigation goes now

The National Transportation Safety Board told CBS News it is monitoring the case, which would typically trigger a formal NTSB investigation given the aircraft's loss. Canada's foreign affairs department said it remains "deeply concerned" and is in contact with the families of the Canadian nationals, while the Bermuda government said it has been in touch with relatives there as well.

None of the eight outlets reviewed have published the names or ages of the six people aboard. The Coast Guard has said it is withholding identities out of respect for next of kin.

With the surface search over, attention shifts to whether sonar equipment can locate wreckage on the seabed and whether investigators can recover a flight data recorder, a device Lake himself said may be hard to find given how the debris field broke apart.