The wreckage of a private plane carrying five men that went missing in 1971 was found at the bottom of Vermont’s Lake Champlain.
The corporate jet disappeared shortly after departing the Burlington airport for Providence, Rhode Island, on Jan. 27, 1971. Those aboard included two crew members and three employees of a Georgia development company Cousins Properties, who were working on a development project in Burlington.
Initial searches for the 10-seat Jet Commander turned up no wreckage and the lake froze over four days after the plane was lost.
Searches failed to find the wreckage of the missing plane
At least 17 other searches happened until underwater searcher Garry Kozak and a team using a remotely operated vehicle last month found the wreckage of a jet with the same custom paint scheme in the lake close to where the radio control tower had last tracked the plane before it disappeared. Sonar images were taken of the wreck found in 200 feet of water near Juniper Island.
“With all those pieces of evidence, we’re 99% absolutely sure,” Kozak told the Associated Press on Monday.
When the ice melted in the spring of 1971, debris from the plane was found on Shelburne Point, according to Kozak. An underwater search in May of 1971 was unable to find the wreckage.
At least 17 other searches happened, including in 2014, according to Kozak. At that time, authorities were spurred by curiosity after the Malaysia Airlines plane disappearance that year with the hope that new technology would find the wreck but it did not.
Relatives of the victims plan to hold a memorial
After the 2014 search was unsuccessful, Kozak became intrigued and searched a sonar survey of the lake taken by the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and Middlebury College. He found four anomalies on the lake floor, per the Associated Press.
Then in 2022, a colleague, Hans Hug of Sonar Search and Recovery in Exeter, N.H., and his friend who has an ROV said they wanted to look for the plane, Kozak said.
The team found a plane but it turned out to be a military aircraft. Last winter Kozak searched the sonar survey again and found another anomaly, which the team discovered last month was likely the plane wreckage.
The relatives of the victims plan to hold a memorial now that they know where the plane is located.
Related: New Evidence in Search for Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, Company Claims
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