A cross-border medical evacuation flight ended in tragedy this weekend, leaving six people dead after the aircraft vanished mid-journey and scattered wreckage was found hundreds of miles off the US northeast coast. The incident unfolded when Latitude Air Ambulance’s Gulfstream G-100, branded Heartbeat 104, departed Bermuda’s L.F. Wade International Airport just before midnight on Friday, heading to Boston Logan International Airport with an expected arrival around 1:30 a.m. local time on Saturday.
Less than an hour after the scheduled arrival time, around 1:00 a.m. Saturday, the Federal Aviation Administration lost all radar and radio contact with the aircraft. By Saturday evening, search teams had located a debris field that was officially confirmed to belong to the downed plane, according to official statements.
Flight tracking data from FlightAware shows the plane suffered a sudden, dramatic loss of altitude shortly before communications went dark. Records indicate the aircraft plunged from its cruising altitude of approximately 24,000 feet to just 11,000 feet before all signals ceased. Audio recordings of air traffic control communications, obtained by the Boston Globe from aviation tracking site LiveATC.net, reveal that flight crews were grappling with technical issues before contact was lost. Controllers can be heard asking pilots to confirm if they were declaring an emergency after the pilot reported vision or navigation issues that left them “coming in blind.” While the pilot’s initial response was too garbled to understand, controllers later confirmed an emergency declaration had been made. Local emergency dispatch records also show crews were alerted to prepare for a landing by a plane experiencing an unspecified electrical fault just after 1 a.m., before updates confirmed the aircraft had dropped off both radio and radar systems entirely.
After more than a day of intensive search operations off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, the U.S. Coast Guard announced Sunday evening it would suspend its search for any possible survivors. Shortly after the Coast Guard’s announcement, Latitude Air Ambulance, the Canadian operator of the medical flight, confirmed that all six people on board are now presumed dead. The casualties include four Canadian nationals and two Bermudian nationals: two Canadian pilots, two Canadian medical crew members, a patient, and the patient’s family escort who was accompanying them on the flight.
“We must now face the heartbreaking reality that the four members of our Latitude team, our patient and the patient’s family escort, who were aboard Heartbeat 104, are presumed to have died,” the company said in an official statement. Latitude Air Ambulance CEO Peter Byl added, “This is an unimaginable loss for our Latitude family and for everyone who loved the six people aboard Heartbeat 104. Our focus now is on supporting their families, supporting our people and assisting the authorities. We will honour our colleagues by remembering the care, professionalism, and commitment they brought to their work every day.”
Latitude Air Ambulance specializes in international medical repatriation flights, moving patients who require care or need to return to their home countries for treatment. The company has confirmed it will fully cooperate with US and international aviation safety officials as they launch an investigation into the cause of the crash. “Determining the circumstances and cause of an aviation accident is a careful and methodical process, and we will not speculate about what occurred,” the company added in its statement, noting that ongoing recovery operations will continue under the leadership of official authorities.