By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
BOSTON, Oct 4 (Reuters) – The US Coast Guard has halted its search for six people who were on a medical transport aircraft that crashed off the coast of Massachusetts’ Nantucket Island.
Officials said four Canadians and two citizens of Bermuda were on the plane, which was headed for Boston’s Logan International Airport.
“Suspending a search is not an easy decision,” said Rear Admiral Matthew Lake, commander of the Coast Guard’s Northeast District, in a statement on Sunday.
The Coast Guard said that after it found debris late on Saturday from a Gulfstream jet traveling to Boston from Bermuda, it searched for the passengers and crew on Sunday with aircraft and vessels on the water.
The aircraft, registered to Canadian air medical transport provider Latitude Air Ambulance, left Bermuda at 12:41 a.m. on Saturday (0301 GMT), according to data from flight tracking website FlightAware.
Local TV station Boston 25 posted an audio clip of Logan’s air traffic controller asking the Gulfstream pilot whether he was declaring an emergency. There was no response from the pilot.
“Given the information shared by authorities and the conclusion of the search-and-rescue phase, 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,” Latitude said in a statement on Sunday.
Latitude said it would work with the US National Transportation Safety Board, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and other authorities on recovery efforts and the investigation into why the plane crashed.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Sergio Non and Thomas Derpinghaus)
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