Search Ends for Canadian Air Ambulance Jet Lost Over the Atlantic, Six Aboard Presumed Dead
Latitude Air Ambulance, an air medical transport provider based in Hamilton, Ontario, issued a statement on the evening of October 4 acknowledging the decision by the United States Coast Guard to conclude active search and rescue operations for its missing medical flight Heartbeat 104 and transition to recovery efforts. The company said the four members of its team, its patient and the patient's family escort who were aboard, six people in all, are presumed to have died.
Heartbeat 104, a Canadian-registered medical jet carrying two pilots, two medical crew, a patient and a family escort, departed Bermuda early on October 3 bound for Boston, Massachusetts. The flight was lost over the Atlantic, south of Nantucket, Massachusetts, and the Coast Guard mounted a large air and sea search, locating a debris field from the aircraft.
Latitude President Peter Byl said in the statement that this is an unimaginable loss for the Latitude family and for everyone who loved the six people aboard Heartbeat 104, and that the company's focus now is on supporting their families, supporting its people and assisting the authorities. The four crew members dedicated themselves to providing care to people at some of the most difficult moments in their lives, and were carrying out that mission when the tragedy occurred, the company said.
Latitude said it will continue to cooperate fully with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and all other relevant authorities as recovery efforts and the investigation proceed. Determining the circumstances and cause of an aviation accident is a careful and methodical process, and the company said it will not speculate about what occurred. It thanked the U.S. Coast Guard and the air traffic controllers, search and rescue crews, first responders and government agencies in Canada, the United States and Bermuda who worked in the search.
Source: Latitude Air Ambulance
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：一架 Gulfstream G100 医疗专机（资料图）。失事的 Heartbeat 104 为同型医疗专机。图片来源：Md Shaifuzzaman Ayon 摄，Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 4.0。EN: A Gulfstream G100 air ambulance (file photo). The lost Heartbeat 104 was a medical jet of the same type. Image: photo by Md Shaifuzzaman Ayon, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
