Bermuda air ambulance specialist calls for full-time service after Gulfstream G100 medevac crash off Nantucket

A Gulfstream G100 medevac jet operated by Latitude Air Ambulance went down in the sea off Nantucket Island while transporting Bermudian patient Marilyn Lavonne Bean and her son, Sergio Wayne Lottimore, to Massachusetts for medical care. Four Canadian crew members also died in the crash.

Gilbert "Artie" Darrell, a former paramedic and firefighter who has worked with Latitude Air Ambulance in the past, described the company as "an extremely professional service" that had never previously had an incident. Edward Schultz, a former chief of emergency services for the Bermuda Hospitals Board, was present on Nantucket at the time and said it was raining as the aircraft approached the island, with a weather front passing over. He said the search, once suspended, would likely resume using side-scanning sonar to locate the main wreckage, after which the US Navy was expected to dispatch a salvage vessel with divers to map the underwater debris field and recover the aircraft, its flight data recorder, and the remains of those on board. Dr Schultz said the crash site depth was suitable for diving and noted with sorrow that the aircraft may have landed safely with only 15 to 20 more minutes of flight time.

Darrell said more than 200 Bermudian patients a year are currently flown overseas for medical care, with many more who need to go never doing so. He has been working with Bermuda's aviation regulators to establish a full-time aircraft on the island, calling the effort "a labour of love" over the past five years, complicated by insurance, government and regulatory challenges. Bermuda Air Medivac, a private company, closed in March 2013 due to financial difficulties. Dr Schultz said Bermuda was well served by leading US medical centres including Johns Hopkins, New York Presbyterian, Mass General-Brigham, Dana Farber, and Lahey, and expressed condolences to all families affected.

Small jurisdictions without their own air ambulance fleet depend on a narrow set of outside operators to move patients to distant specialist centres, and the loss of a single aircraft removes capacity that is not easily replaced on short notice. Darrell's account of more than 200 Bermudian patients flown overseas annually, against a background where a prior local provider failed financially in 2013, illustrates how thin that margin already was before this crash.

The medevac segment runs on a small number of specialised aircraft and crews, so continuity of service for patients depends heavily on how quickly insurers, regulators and the remaining operators can absorb the gap left by an incident. Darrell's multi-year push for a permanent aircraft based in Bermuda, built around insurance, government and regulatory sign-off, shows how long that kind of resilience takes to put in place even before a loss like this one.

The salvage operation Dr Schultz described — side-scanning sonar to locate the wreckage, followed by a US Navy vessel with divers to recover the aircraft, its flight data recorder and the remains of those aboard — will determine what investigators can establish about the flight's final minutes. Whether Bermuda's regulators move faster on a full-time air ambulance arrangement in response is the next thing to watch.