Missing Medical Jet With 6 Aboard Loses Transponder, Complicating Atlantic Search
Updated
Updated · WCVB Boston · Oct 3
Missing Medical Jet With 6 Aboard Loses Transponder, Complicating Atlantic Search
3 articles · Updated · WCVB Boston · Oct 3
Summary
A Gulfstream G-100 carrying six people from Bermuda to Boston vanished after the pilot reported he was "coming in blind" and having electrical issues; the FAA issued a search-and-rescue alert at 1:20 a.m.
Electrical failure likely knocked out the jet’s transponder and satellite-linked equipment, leaving rescuers without the precise tracking data normally used to narrow a crash site.
Tom Kinton of Kinton Aviation Consulting said that without those signals, the aircraft becomes "nothing more than a piece of metal in the sky," forcing crews to rely on ground radar with roughly a 200-mile range.
The Coast Guard has deployed a Jayhawk helicopter crew and the cutter William Sparling, but the loss of onboard electronics sharply widens the uncertainty over where the air ambulance may have gone down.