Experts believe they found the wreckage of a private corporate jet 200 feet below the surface in Lake Champlain more than 50 years after it mysteriously disappeared shortly after takeoff.
The private plane carrying five men took off from Burlington, Vermont, on a snowy night, but never made it to its destination in Providence, Rhode Island on Jan 27, 1971.
Rescuers looking for the plane in the immediate aftermath didn’t find it and four days after the apparent crash Lake Champlain froze over.
Underwater searcher Garry Kozak and a team were able to link the 10-seat plane through the same custom paint job when they found the wreckage in the lake last month using a remotely operated vehicle.
Parts of the doomed plane were located 200 feet below the surface near where the radio control tower had last tracked it before it vanished.
Kozak told NBC 10 Boston he was “100% confident” the wreck is of the missing plane.
Three employees of an Atlanta-based development company, Cousin’s Properties, working on a project in Burlington, as well as two crew members, were on the plane.
The niece of pilot George Nikita called the discovery a “peaceful feeling” and “very sad feeling.”
“We know what happened,” she said Tuesday. “We’ve seen a couple of photos. We’re struggling I think with that now.”
The son of a passenger on the plane said it was a relief to know where it ended up.
“Spending 53 years not knowing if the plane was in the lake or maybe on a mountainside around there somewhere was distressing,” said Frank Wilder, whose father went by the same name.
“And again, I’m feeling relieved that I know where the plane is now but unfortunately it’s opening other questions and we have to work on those now.”
Debris from the plane was initially found in the spring of 1971 at Shelburne Point after the ice melted from the lake, Kozak said. But a subsequent underwater search turned up nothing and at least another 17 searches, including as recently as 2014, also led to nothing.
The three other men aboard the plane were pilot Donald Myers and Cousin’s Property’s Robert Williams and Richard Windsor.
The National Transportation Safety Board will determine if the missing plane was actually recovered.
“We will be evaluating the specifics of what was found, and the degree of certainty to which we are able to positively link it back to the wreckage that was located,” spokesperson Peter Knudson said in a statement to NBC 10 Boston.
“Following that, if and when any of that wreckage were recovered, we would determine what level of examination would be appropriate given what is recovered and what condition it is in.”
With Post wires
