On Monday the Bermuda Police Service released the names of the two Bermudians aboard the medical jet that disappeared off Nantucket early Saturday. They were Marilyn Lavonne Bean, 66, and her son, Sergio Wayne Lottimore, 41. Officials have said the flight carried one patient and one family member. According to the Boston Globe, it was still not clear on Monday which of them was the one travelling to Boston for treatment. The other four people aboard were the Canadian crew. Their names have not been released.
The US Coast Guard suspended its search on Sunday evening. Late that night, Latitude Air Ambulance, the Hamilton, Ontario, company that operated the jet, said in a statement that it “must now face the heartbreaking reality” that its four crew members, the patient and the patient’s family escort “are presumed to have died.” It described the Coast Guard as moving from search and rescue “to recovery efforts.”
Here is what is known about the flight. The jet was a Gulfstream G100 flying as Heartbeat 104, on its way from Bermuda to Boston. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said in a news release that the crew reported electrical difficulties as the plane approached Boston. The jet then descended rapidly, and air traffic control lost contact with it south of Nantucket. The Globe reported that in the final minutes before the plane dropped off radar, at around 1 a.m. Saturday, recordings show the pilot struggling to communicate an emergency to controllers. Flight data then showed it falling thousands of feet within minutes. AirMed&Rescue reported that flight-tracking data cited by Canadian and US media showed a drop from about 24,000 feet to roughly 10,000 to 11,000 feet in a couple of minutes before the signal was lost.
The Coast Guard has said the Federal Aviation Administration contacted it at about 2 a.m. Saturday to report that contact with the jet had been lost. According to CBC News, the Coast Guard and National Guard then searched an area of 11,500 square kilometres using fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and ships. Debris was found on Sunday morning about 20 miles off Nantucket, as rews reported at the weekend, but none of the six people were found. Rear Adm. Matthew Lake, commander of the Coast Guard’s Northeast District, said on Sunday that the water in the area is about 80 to 90 feet deep. He said the Coast Guard was working with Massachusetts authorities to bring in sonar-equipped vessels to search the seabed. Announcing the suspension that night, he said: “Suspending a search is not an easy decision.”
Whose investigation
The crash raised a jurisdiction question. The plane was registered in Canada and flown by a Canadian crew. Its passengers were from Bermuda, and it went down off Massachusetts. On Monday the US National Transportation Safety Board said the “appropriate investigative jurisdiction is currently being determined,” and that “Additional information regarding jurisdiction is expected to be announced soon.” The answer came the same day from Canada. The TSB said it would lead the investigation because, under international agreements, investigations should be led by the state of registry. AirMed&Rescue quoted the board as saying “the investigation shall be conducted by the State of registry, which is Canada.” The NTSB will assist. The TSB said it will send investigators in the coming days to help search for and recover the jet. Latitude said it would cooperate fully with both boards and “will not speculate about what occurred.”
The aircraft was older than its current name. It was built by Israel Aerospace Industries in 1996 and registered under the model name Astra SPX, later changed to Gulfstream G100, according to the Canadian Civil Aircraft Register. It came to Canada in 2012, and Latitude has owned it since 2018.
John Goglia, a former NTSB member who now hosts a weekly podcast about aircraft crashes, told the Globe that investigators are a long way from knowing the cause. “He might have been too busy trying to recover himself [that] it got away from him,” he said of the pilot. He added that transponder data may show how much control the pilot had at the end and how severe the final descent was for the people aboard. The plane’s radar history and what the pilot said before the emergency could also help, he said. “Other than that you’re stuck until they find something [more].”
Why Boston
Bermuda sends a lot of its serious medical care abroad, and much of it goes to Massachusetts. A 2022 Bermuda Health Council report, cited by the Globe, estimated that more than 90 percent of Bermuda residents had health insurance that typically included some coverage for overseas care. Four of the five hospitals Bermudians used most often were in the Boston area: Boston Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Lahey Clinic. Common diagnoses included kidney failure, heart conditions and hypertension, and cancer. Only a small share of those patients travel by air ambulance. Another council report, covering claims from 2018 to 2023, counted 125 medical transport flight claims in 2023 worth more than $3 million in total, most of them for people over 65. That works out to more than $24,000 per claim on average. Bermuda Air Ambulance, a local operator, says on its website that about 200 patients a year need emergency specialist care at overseas centres. It is not known where Bean or Lottimore were seeking treatment. A Mass General Brigham spokesperson, Jessica Pastore, said the plane was not bound for any of its hospitals.
Lottimore was a vice president of credit, bond and political risk reinsurance at Hamilton Re, a Bermuda-based firm, according to a 2024 press release. “The entire Hamilton team is heartbroken by the loss of a respected leader, colleague and friend,” the company wrote on LinkedIn on Monday. Warwick Academy, Bermuda’s oldest primary and secondary school, said he graduated in 2002 and had been chosen as a role model for other students. It called him “an outstanding person.”
Bermuda Premier E. David Burt wrote on social media that “the worst fears have been realized.” Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath said she was “heartbroken by the tragic loss of life” and noted that Latitude operates out of the city’s airport. Peter Byl, Latitude’s president, called it “an unimaginable loss for our Latitude family and for everyone who loved the six people” aboard. Latitude said its four crew members had dedicated themselves to caring for people “at some of the most difficult moments in their lives,” and “were carrying out that mission when this tragedy occurred.”
Bermuda Health Minister Kim Wilson thanked the crew who had flown to Bermuda to help a family in need. “We... recognize the dedicated crew who came to Bermuda to provide a service that has supported many families during some of life’s most difficult moments,” she said. “For that, we are deeply grateful.”