In a remarkable discovery, a private jet that mysteriously vanished in 1971 with five people on board has been located at the bottom of Lake Champlain in Vermont.
The private jet vanished on a snowy night in 1971.
The Jet Commander aircraft took off from Burlington International Airport on the night of January 27, 1971, bound for Providence, Rhode Island.
At the time, on board were two crew members and three employees from an Atlanta-based development company.
However, the plane never reached its destination, and a lengthy search over the following decades failed to discover any trace of the missing aircraft or its occupants.
Garry Kozak, an expert in underwater recovery, took on the case.
The private jet mysteriously disappeared in 1971 with five people was finally found
Kozak lived in Goffstown, New Hampshire. He had been studying the lake for a long time, analyzing previous scans and searching for any signs of the lost plane.
Over Memorial Day weekend, his hard work paid off. His team found many pieces of debris at the bottom of the large 490-square-mile lake.
They used remote-operated vehicles and high-tech cameras. They found a broken plane body, an instrument panel, wing parts, and what seemed to be engine parts. All of these matched the Jet Commander plane.
Kozak told NBC5 News, "If it looks like a duck, and acts like a duck, then it's probably a duck."
He was sure they had found the lost plane after decades of searching.
In May, Kozak and his team searched the area again. They used special machines and high-tech cameras to find many pieces of debris that had never been found before.
The team discovered a broken plane body at the bottom of the lake. The paint on it matched the missing plane.
They also found an instrument panel, wing parts, what seemed to be engine parts, and other signs that proved it was the missing plane.
The discovery of the missing aircraft plays a profound meaning to the victims' families.
This discovery brought a lot of relief to the families of the five passengers who died including George Nikita, Donald Myers, Frank Wilder, Richard Kirby Windsor, and Robert Ransom Williams III.
Kristina Coffey, the daughter of pilot George Nikita expressed her relief after the discovery of the missing plane.
Kozak and his team said that Hans Hug, Bruce Stebbins, and Tim McDonald were very important in making the discovery.
After they confirmed what they found, they gave all the evidence to the National Transportation Safety Board and other authorities to investigate further.
The families of the five people who died can now have some peace, even though their fate is tragic. They had to wait over 50 years for this.
