What A Twelve-Mile Line in the Water Means for the Families
Six people are missing today in the Atlantic south of Nantucket, and their families are waiting on a Coast Guard search that is still underway. Our thoughts are with them, and with the crews from Air Station Cape Cod and Station Brant Point who have been on the water and in the air since before dawn this morning.
Early Saturday morning, October 3, 2026, a Gulfstream G100 air ambulance, Canadian registration C-GRJP, operated by Latitude Air Ambulance of Hamilton, Ontario, lost contact with air traffic control while descending toward Boston on a medical transport flight from L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda. The airplane departed Bermuda at about 11:40 pm Friday and was due in Boston at about 1:30 am. Publicly available tracking data shows it descending normally from cruise, then losing more than 9,000 feet in about two minutes, with the last position recorded around 1:05 am off Nantucket. The FAA issued a search and rescue alert at about 1:20 am. The Coast Guard has deployed an HC-144 airplane, an MH-60 helicopter, a 47-foot motor lifeboat, and the cutter William Sparling. Authorities have not confirmed a crash, have not released a final position, and have not identified the six aboard. An air ambulance of this type typically carries two pilots, a nurse, a respiratory therapist or physician, the patient, and sometimes a family member.
A word about that descent figure, because it is already circulating. A normal arrival descent in a business jet runs roughly 1,500 to 2,500 feet per minute. A loss of 9,000 feet in two minutes is two to three times that. It is also within the range of a deliberate emergency descent, which pilots are trained to fly at the airplane’s maximum rate after a pressurization or smoke event, so the number by itself does not tell anyone whether the airplane was under control. That is precisely the distinction the recorders and the wreckage exist to answer.
We will not speculate about what happened. The investigators will check the radar and ADS-B data, the air traffic control recordings, the airplane’s maintenance records, and, if the wreckage is recovered, the cockpit voice recorder (if any) and the airplane itself.
What we can explain now is something the families will hear about soon and that almost no news coverage will mention: an aircraft lost at sea is governed by a wholly different body of law than one lost on land, and the single most important fact in that body of law is a line in the water twelve miles from shore.
The Airplane and The Operator
The missing aircraft was an 1125 Astra SPX Israel manufactured by Aircraft Industries in 1996. In 2001, Gulfstream became the Type Certificate holder for the Astra SPX, which was subsequently renamed the Gulfstream G100. Production of the SPX ended in the mid-2000s, so every G100 flying is at least twenty years old. It is a seven-to-nine passenger jet with two Honeywell TFE731 engines, a 3,000 mile range, and a long record in corporate and air ambulance service.
Latitude Air Ambulance has flown medical repatriation missions since 2009, and a flight from Bermuda, where hospital capacity is limited, to Boston’s teaching hospitals is a routine mission for an operator like this one.
How the Law of the Sea Applies to Airplanes
Most people, and many lawyers, are surprised to learn that a plane crash can be a maritime case. Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Executive Jet Aviation v. City of Cleveland in 1972, an aviation accident falls within federal admiralty jurisdiction when it occurs on navigable water and bears a “significant relationship to traditional maritime activity.”
Carrying passengers across the open ocean between two ports, which is what a Bermuda to Boston flight does, is the clearest case. Courts applied maritime law to Alaska Airlines Flight 261, which went into the Pacific off Point Mugu in 2000, to TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, and to many smaller accidents. If this airplane went into the Atlantic as the publicly available radar data shows, maritime law will apply.
That matters because maritime wrongful death law is federal, is largely judge-made, and in one respect is governed by a statute Congress wrote in 1920 for sailors: the Death on the High Seas Act.
Why Twelve Miles Matter
The Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA), codified at 46 U.S.C. sections 30301 through 30308, allows a decedent’s personal representative to sue for a death caused by a wrongful act on the high seas, for the benefit of the spouse, parent, child, or dependent relative.
After TWA 800, Congress amended the Act for commercial aviation. Under current law, if a death results from a commercial aviation accident more than twelve nautical miles from the shore of the United States, the Act applies and the family may recover for loss of care, comfort, and companionship in addition to their loved one’s claims.
If the accident occurs within twelve nautical miles of shore, the Act does not apply at all, and the family’s rights are determined by general maritime law and the law of the nearest state, in this case Massachusetts, which can be broader than general maritime law and DOHSA. Whether an air ambulance flight operated for hire by a licensed commercial carrier is a “commercial aviation accident” under DOHSA is a question the courts have not squarely answered for medical flights, and it is one of the first questions any lawyer for these families will have to confront.
So, the location of the wreckage is not only a question for the search. It is the first question in the legal analysis, and much of what follows depends on the answer. The last position publicly reported from ADS-B data was 41.0903 North, 70.1878 West. That point lies about 9.6 nautical miles due south of Nantucket’s shore, roughly between Cisco Beach and Miacomet, inside the twelve-mile line.
It is also only the last point at which the airplane reported itself. From 11,000 feet at the descent rate being reported, it had something over a minute of flight remaining and could have traveled several more miles in any direction before it reached the water.
Where the wreckage is actually found, measured from the official low-water baseline rather than the beach on a map, and where the chain of events began if it began earlier at altitude, will decide whether the Death on the High Seas Act applies to these families at all. If it does not, their claims fall under general maritime law and the law of Massachusetts, which allows recovery for the loss of a family member’s companionship and can be more favorable. If it does, the families’ remedies may narrow considerably. Lawyers on both sides will be measuring that arc before the investigators have finished measuring anything else.
Who Investigates
Under international rules, the country where an accident occurs leads the investigation, and when an aircraft is lost on the high seas, the country of registry leads instead. The NTSB and Canada’s Transportation Safety Board will both be involved, and they routinely agree between themselves who takes the lead. The water south of Nantucket is relatively shallow by ocean standards, which makes wreckage recovery possible, as it was for TWA 800. Whether the airplane carried a flight data recorder depends on its configuration and the Canadian rules under which it operated.
Our Experience
Aviation Law Group has handled aviation wrongful death, admiralty, and admiralty claims arising in United States territorial waters, in foreign waters, and on the high seas, including litigation in federal court.
We represented numerous families of Alaska Airlines Flight 261, where the court’s ruling that maritime law applied in a manner favorable to the plaintiffs was central to the outcome. We represented two American families after a scheduled seaplane crashed in Canadian waters in 2009, bringing suit in the United States and resolving both claims shortly after filing. Attorney Robert Hedrick has written and lectured on the application of the Death on the High Seas Act to aviation accidents for more than twenty-five years, including “The Death on the High Seas Act Conundrum” in the Washington State Bar News and presentations on the law of the sea and aviation accidents, the Mutiny Bay floatplane accident, and seaplane safety. Attorney Kerry Kovarik has maintained aircraft of the Astra and Westwind family and knows the airplane firsthand.
At Aviation Law Group, all our attorneys are either pilots or mechanics, and we have extensively litigated the maritime questions this accident raises. We maintain offices in Seattle, South Florida, and Hawaii, have attorneys licensed in Washington, California, Florida, Hawaii, Alaska, Texas, New Mexico, and Vermont, and represents families in all fifty states and internationally through association with local counsel where required.
If your family is affected by this accident, the most important steps in the first weeks are to preserve evidence, to understand which body of law governs your claim and where it may be brought, and not to sign anything or give any statement to an insurer before you have spoken with counsel. We would be honored to speak with you, confidentially and without obligation.